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1 Kail Padgitt, Ranking State and Local Sales Taxes 1 (2011)

handle is hein.taxfoundation/ffcfixz0001 and id is 1 raw text is: gn I..... . I d,, K............ Febtwai\ , 2011 No. 258 Ranking State and Local Sales Taxes By Kail Padgitt Introduction Retail sales taxes are correctly described in textbooks as transparent taxes; citizens are aware of how much they pay and when. On any particular purchase, an individual can easily identify the amount and percentage he paid in sales tax; it's right there on the receipt. As a result, even people with no interest in taxation have an idea of the general sales tax rate where they live. However, in two-thirds of the country, local-option sales taxes make it somewhat more difficult for citizens to know what the rates are, and transparency suffers. Thirty-three states allow localities to charge a local sales tax. The rates vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and here we average those in a way that gives an accurate impression of the sales tax in each state (see Table 1). Combined Rates Five states do without a general statewide sales tax: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon. Four of them prohibit local-option taxes as well, so they have a combined rate of zero. Alaska does allow the local option, notably Juneau's city sales tax rate of 5 percent, and the weighted average of the local rates is 1.1 percent, so the combined rate is also 1.1 percent. Among states with a state-level general sales tax, the five with the lowest combined rates are Hawaii (4.35 percent), Maine (5 percent), Virginia (5 percent), South Dakota (5.22 percent), and Wyoming (5.3 percent). The five states with the highest combined state-local rates are Tennessee (9.44 percent), California (9.08 percent), Arizona (9.01 percent), Louisiana (8.69 percent) and Washington (8.64 percent).