It's that time of year again that is loathed by some and loved by others: tax season. Americans' state and local taxes vary, sometimes significantly, depending on where they live. WalletHub, the personal finance website, sought to find out how aggressively states tax their citizens by measuring the proportion of total personal income that residents pay toward state and local taxes to arrive at an overall tax burden for each state. Researchers compared the 50 states across the three tax types of state tax burdens — property taxes, individual income taxes, and sales and excise taxes — as a share of total personal income in the state. They found that the highest and lowest state tax burdens differ by more than seven percentage points. The personal finance website also shares how the pandemic continues to impact this annual process: "Tax Day 2021 figures to be especially messy, too, as governments across the country struggle to cover shortfalls stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people look for income to actually pay taxes on, and protesters urge us to rethink how our tax dollars are being used," writes John S. Kiernan, managing editor at WalletHub. "But even with the continued difficulties of the pandemic, there will be a Tax Day this year as always, proving that taxes truly are among the few things in life that are unavoidable." See the gallery for the 12 states with the biggest tax burdens. Related: |

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