Map: Income Taxes by US County | Hacker News Reader

Map: Income Taxes by US County

brookings.edu

39 pointspg23 comments

It appears that Teton County Wyoming is the county that pays the most on average at 67k.

Does anybody have any insight into why that is? For the most part i understand that high taxes in the more populous and economically prosperous zones but why a county in Wyoming?

edit: From the nested link

> "In addition, some counties that host popular ski resorts—such as Pitkin County, CO (which contains the city of Aspen) and Teton County, WY (which contains Jackson Hole)—also have notably high income tax burdens."

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2013/12/13-inc...

Wikipedia

"Teton County contains the affluent Jackson Hole skiing area. In addition, the county contains all of Grand Teton National Park and 40.4% of Yellowstone National Park's total area, including over 96.6% of its water area (largely in Yellowstone Lake).

It has the highest personal per capita income in the U.S. at $132,728, surpassing Manhattan with $120,790."

Exactly - as soon as I saw that black area, immediately thought "Jackson Hole".

Not only is it a very popular skiing area, it's also not a bad place to retire if you enjoy the outdoors, hence, capital gains are a major source of income for the wealthy retirees there.

I had the same question. They have a small population (~20,000), and 65% of the county's income is derived from capital gains, not wages. I'd guess the county is an enclave that wealthy people move to after they've made their money elsewhere. Wyoming has no personal or business income tax.

http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/news/top_stories/irs-county-is...

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-04-17-wyomin...

I wonder what it's like to live in those counties -- do people just stay on their large standalone properties? Are there local services catering to billionaires, like in Palo Alto there are stores like Restoration Hardware catering to mere millionaires? Do the megarich actually spend appreciable amounts of times there, or is it just a "permanent residence" for people who are otherwise transient?

Jackson definitely has those services. I used to live in Cheyenne but went over to Jackson once a year or so. My old boss moved up there recently and now works remotely as a programmer from a cabin he built.

Jackson is amazing... Housing is expensive though!

Also note this 66k accounts for about 18% of income.

For comparison, Shannon County in South Dakota (ranked 3135) pays $922, or 4.5% of income.

(There should probably be someone ranked 3144th, but Shannon seemed pretty close to the bottom...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_(United_States)#Statisti...

Shannon County is the 48th poorest county in the US by household income, and the second poorest, after Buffalo County, SD, by per capita income.

My brother used to work on an ambulance crew on the Pine Ridge reservation, which contains Shannon County. The poverty there is absolutely staggering, and absolutely heartbreaking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lowest-income_counties...

The owner of worlds.

"County" is such an arbitrary designation by which to look at data like this, precisely because of the outliers. If you are going to compare by arbitrary geofenced areas, why not go more granular and compare by zip code?[1]

Example outlier: Brooklyn (Kings County, NY) is a single county, but if it were a separate city would be the 3rd largest city in the US. The tax statistics for this gigantic county (by population, not land size) can vary each mile you drive down the road.

[1]: IRS 2008 .csv tax data by zip code (large) http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/08zpall.csv

[1]: Docs and other formats: http://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Individual-Income-Tax-S...

Brooklyn would be 4th largest city in the US, right behind Chicago.

2010 census Chicago: 2.696M

2010 census Brooklyn: 2.505M

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Brooklyn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

I care enormously about this as I was raised in Chicagoland, now live in Brooklyn.

Now please, stop misinforming the whole internet.

The entire hypothetical premise is based upon NYC breaking into 5 cities (one per borough), therefore making Brooklyn 3rd largest after LA and Chicago.

This is yet another one of those cases where the mean, by itself, is pretty much meaningless. It would probably be rather enlightening to see the median by county as well.

The associated blog post also seems to use median and average interchangeably(?!):

While the median federal income tax burden across counties is about $3,400

the average tax burden across counties is $3,419

The distribution may be more normal than I assume, or the word "median" in the first graf may be a mistake.

In either case, I too would love to see the median-based map.

Note: This is federal income tax only. No state, local, sales, or other tax burdens were included.

This map is of property taxes, I agree it would be interesting to see how things shake out when you add it all together, including the state/city income and sales tax burdens.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2013/county-p...

And keep in mind the unique structure of VA counties (especially in NoVA), where cities are carved out from their surrounding counties, which leads to deep pockets of blue (voting) and high income tax rates due to concentrated wealth not being diluted by less affluent areas.

I'm confused as to why Teton County, WY has one of the highest income tax rate in the country, given that there is no income tax in Wyoming or Teton County. The article suggest this is because of the ski resorts, yet I know of no income tax within Wyoming.

Zero state taxes. Full federal taxes (on the capital gains they're most likely to earn, formerly 15% and now 23.8%; on dividends, much higher)

It's proving a weak relative of the Laffer curve: rich people move to the lowest practical tax jurisdiction as their taxable income increases. Particularly wealthy retirees earning passive income.

Average taxes paid, per what? Per person, per county? It's probably per filer but I wish they would explicitly state that.

> How much does the average tax filer in your county pay in income taxes

^ First sentence of the article

Wow. That contrast between New York and Bronx counties is staggering.

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