U-Haul released its annual Growth Index today which shows Americans continue to move away from high-tax states in favor of low-tax and no-income-tax states.
Three of the top four states attracting movers have no personal income tax: Texas, Florida, and Tennessee.
California is ranked dead last in the index and imposes the highest top personal income tax rate in the nation at 13.3%.
The ten best ranked states in the index have significantly lower personal income tax rates than the index’s ten worst ranked states:
3.5 percent: Average top state personal income tax rate of the 10 best ranked states.
7.2 percent: Average top state personal income tax rate of the 10 worst ranked states.
As a group, the 10 worst ranked states impose a top personal income tax rate more than twice as high as the 10 best ranked states.
Now let’s look at the top and bottom five, where the tax contrast is even starker:
2.0 percent: Average top state personal income tax rate of the five best ranked states.
9.8 percent: Average top state personal income tax rate of the five worst ranked states.
As a group, the five worst ranked states impose a top personal income tax rate nearly five times as high as the five best ranked states.
(See ATR’s state tax map here)
The 10 best ranked states in the U-Haul Growth Index are Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Washington, Arizona, Idaho, Alabama and Georgia.
The 10 worst ranked states in the U-Haul Growth Index are Michigan, Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California.
As noted by the company, the U-Haul Growth Index “ranks states by their net gain (or loss) of customers who rented a one-way truck, trailer or U-Box moving containers in one state and dropped off their equipment in another state.”
The U-Haul rankings also show states attracting residents tend to be those that protect a worker’s freedom to decide for themselves whether or not to join a union.
Among the top ten performing states on the U-Haul index, nine of them have a Right-to-Work law that prevents workers from being forced to join and pay dues to a union as a condition of employment.
Among the bottom ten states on the U-Haul index, NONE of them has a right-to-work law. All are forced unionism states.
“The U-Haul annual report lets everyone see which states are failing and which are succeeding as judged by actual Americans,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
Regarding California’s sixth consecutive year of finishing dead last — 50th place — Norquist said: “No state is without value. Some serve as bad examples.”
See Also: California Ranks Dead Last in U-Haul Index for Sixth Consecutive Year
