(The Center Square) - Oklahoma scored among the bottom half of states for its approach to taxing individual income, according to a report from the Tax Foundation.
Oklahoma’s state and local individual income tax collections per capita are at around $945, according to the report. Oklahoma is among the majority of states with a graduated individual income tax ranging from 0.25% to 4.75%.
States that performed best in the Tax Foundation’s analysis were those that did not tax individual income at all. Top performers also had a flat, low-rate income tax with few deductions or exemptions.
States with the best individual income tax scores were Alaska, Florida, South Dakota and Wyoming – according to the report. Those with the worst scores included New York, California, New Jersey, Connecticut and Hawaii.
The Tax Foundation is an independent tax policy nonprofit. The individual income tax scores are part of its larger analysis, the 2023 State Business Tax Climate Index, which evaluates five major components of states’ tax structures.
Oklahoma remains one of the states with the lowest tax burdens in the country, according to another report, which listed Oklahoma as the state with the 10th-lowest tax burden.
As workers receive more location flexibility with their jobs post-pandemic, states are looking to their tax codes to become more economically competitive, the Tax Foundation noted in another report.
Oklahoma is facing one of the more severe worker shortages in the nation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported this week. The state only has 56 available workers for every 100 open jobs.
The chamber said there are currently an estimated 123,000 job openings in Oklahoma and 56,822 unemployed workers. About 61% of Oklahomans are working or actively looking for work.
Millions of workers left the labor force during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates there would be 1.8 million more workers today if labor force participation was the same as during Feb. 2020.
“We have a lot of jobs, but not enough workers to fill them. If every unemployed person in the country found a job, we would still have 4 million open jobs,” said Stephanie Ferguson, the Director of Global Employment Policy & Special Initiatives for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Oklahoma is among only six states that stand out from the national trend in that they are one of the few with a higher percentage of their labor force working than before the pandemic.
via Oklahoma's Center Square News