Report: Mississippi Among Worst Bang for Tax Bucks

Mississippi politicians love to crow about the state’s low taxes and, in the most recent legislative session, tried unsuccessfully to empty the treasury even more.

Yet, a new report out today from financial-information website WalletHub shows that Mississippi taxpayers, the nation’s poorest, don’t get very much for what they do spend on taxes.

In fact, Mississippi ranks near the bottom for taxpayer return-on-investment. WalletHub’s analysis, released just ahead of tax day, looked at states’ tax rates, infrastructure quality, education systems, health outcome, public safety, economy and pollution. Mississippi ranked 47th among the states, ahead of the neighboring states of Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama.

Mississippi scored lowest in the economy category at No. 50. The state’s 7 percent seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is one of the nation’s highest, better only than Nevada and the District of Columbia, data the Bureau of Labor Statistics released in late March show. Mississippi also finished in the bottom 10 percent of states for the quality of health and education.

Progressives have long argued that policies such as fully funding the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which the Legislature has done just twice since 1997, and using the Affordable Care Act to expand the federal-state Medicaid program would put Mississippi in a better position in terms of health and education.

Those arguments have fallen on deaf ears with the Republican-led executive and legislative branches of Mississippi government, who say the state cannot afford either MAEP or Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

Partisan differences on tax priorities emerged as a lightning rod late in the 2015 legislative session, when House Democrats killed a Republican plan for $550 million in state income tax relief.

“I think this draws a bright line of distinction between those of us who want to provide tax relief for people and those of us who don’t,” House Speaker Philip Gunn told reporters late in the session.

The WalletHub study’s findings, however, challenge the thinking that conservative tax policies are a boon to taxpayers. On average, the analysis found that blue states—states where a majority of voters supported President Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012—ranked slightly higher for taxpayer ROI than red states, where Mitt Romney won.

Here’s how Mississippi’s taxpayer ROI rankings breaks down, according to the WalletHub study: