Where Each U.S. State Gets Its Tax Revenue From

I'm a Delawarean, and I have done research and reporting about the state's unique role in corporate America.

You may wonder why two-thirds of the Fortune 500 are incorporated in Delaware. Is it because the cost of incorporation is lower than in other states, or because corporate tax rates are lower? Those are factors, but they are not the primary reason. The primary reason is risk avoidance, and in particular legal risk avoidance.

Delaware benefits from a flywheel effect: Because so many companies are incorporated in the state, its Chancery Court has a more developed set of case law than other states, and so outcomes of lawsuits involving corporations are more predictable -- which makes it an even more attractive place to incorporate, which continues the flywheel effect.

The down side is that the state is incredibly dependent on corporate licensing fees and escheatment. States like Nevada have, in recent years, been competing against Delaware as a corporate haven, and if we start to see a significant migration, we'll be in a real pickle, because the state imposes no sales tax and has relatively low property taxes.

Alaska gets a huge portion of its revenue from taxes on extracting oil and gas. This is a model that any state could use on data centers extracting compute from local resources. And if demand for compute is actually heading up the Kardashev scale, it could eventually fund the whole state and subsidize resident incomes. It would act as a hedge against possible disruptions of AI.

They need to show distribution of federal funds because it is not fairly allocated.

11% corporate income tax in Idaho surprised me, given how heavily conservative they tend to vote.

Interesting as a percentage but convert the axis to actual dollars for the real story.

A few observations (these are all on a relative basis, as the chart shows):

- NH gets nearly 2/3 of its revenue from property taxes

- OR raises more of its revenue than CA in income tax

- TN/AZ are a close 2nd/3rd to WA in sales tax revenue

Clicking “use this visualization” gives you image version that doesn’t cause seizures

I suspect "other" is mining or equivalent natural exploitation(oil)

And pet peeve, personal income tax and corporate income tax are almost the same thing. With few exceptions the individual person does not pay their income tax, the corporation does, and for those exceptions the individual is the corporation. Income tax is really a sales tax on a corporation biggest expense, it's payroll.

that website is cancer, just for an image

I wonder if Delaware's massively oversized license tax portion is simply because so many companies incorporate there.

A good portion of revenue is from property taxes. A property tax is a wealth tax. I always find the discussion interesting around wealth taxes on billionaires equity when the average worker has typically always paid a wealth tax on their largest asset.

Here's a website that would have been significantly better if it had been written using AI. HN readers complain about "AI slop" but I would prefer AI slop over this site. Folks, if you are not motivated to make a decent page, please use AI.