ALBANY — The Empire State is tops again — for having the highest tax burden of any state in the nation.
In what’s become an annual ritual, New York, followed by New Jersey and Connecticut, led the nation in combined state and local taxes, the latest report by the Tax Foundation found.
New Yorkers were socked with an average tax burden calculated at 12.8 percent of their income in 2010, according to the conservative think tank, which has been tracking state-by-state tax burdens since 1977.
And in every survey, New York has been tops. In 2010, that distinction amounted to a whopping $6,375 average tax burden for every man, woman and child.
In New Jersey, the tax burden was put at 12.4 percent of income and in Connecticut it was 12.3 percent. Including New York, the three states were the only ones with a tax burden above 12 percent.
The foundation faulted “high levels of state expenditure” as the culprit.
The least-taxed state is Alaska, where residents paid just 7 percent of their income to the taxman.
Gov. Cuomo, who has called the foundation a right-wing group with an ideologically driven agenda, said, “We’ve gone a long way since” fiscal year 2010, the year on which the foundation based its report — and the year before he took office.
He cited last year’s cap on local-property-tax growth and a modest income-tax cut for middle- and upper-middle-class taxpayers that took effect this year.
He also approved an income-tax hike on millionaires this year, to 8.82 percent from its scheduled 6.85 percent level. But because the state had temporarily hiked rates on seven-figure earners to 8.97 percent through 2011, even they are paying less this year than in 2010.
Still, “any way you slice or dice the data, New York has a very long way to go to close its tax gap with the rest of the nation,” said, E.J. McMahon of the conservative Manhattan Institute.
McMahon said New York would have to cut its total tax burden by $3 billion just to match second-place New Jersey — and by about $37 billion to match the national average of 9.9 percent of income paid to taxes.
Yesterday’s report followed a foundation study earlier this month that rated New York’s business tax climate the worst in the nation — with New Jersey second worst.
“It’s kind of a double-whammy for New York,” said foundation economist Scott Drenkard.