Fact check: Do blue states have higher tax burdens than red states in the 2024 tax season?

1. What advocates claim when they say “blue states tax more” — and where that comes from

Advocates for the claim point to headline figures showing highest top income tax rates and overall tax burdens concentrated in Democratic-governed states. For example, a 2024 WalletHub report lists California, New York, Oregon, Minnesota, and Maryland among the highest top income-tax states, and ranks New York, Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, and California as the highest overall-tax-burden states—many of which are reliably Democratic in recent national elections ^[1]. Those rankings are widely cited because they combine state income, property, sales, and excise taxes into a single “tax burden” figure, producing an intuitive narrative that blue states tax residents more.

2. Why a single ranking can mislead—different taxes, different baselines

State tax burdens depend on methodology: what counts as “tax burden” (per capita, share of income, or marginal rates) and which taxes are included. The Tax Foundation’s measures emphasize structural competitiveness of tax codes—absence of an income tax or lower combined rates—yielding different leaders and laggards than aggregated-burden lists ^[3]. A separate state-by-state compilation shows 43 states and DC levy individual income taxes with 7 states having no income tax, and substantial variation in rate structures and brackets ^[2]. These differences mean a single headline ranking can obscure that many red states collect revenue via sales or property taxes rather than high income rates.

3. What changed in 2024 — cuts, consolidations, and rate shifts that reshape comparisons

Multiple states enacted tax changes affecting 2024 comparisons: 14 states implemented individual income-tax rate reductions or structural changes in 2024, and 15 states altered top marginal rates, mostly reducing them ^{[4] [5]}. Simultaneously, some states introduced property-tax relief or targeted exemptions while others made cuts to corporate or personal rates ^[6]. These contemporaneous reforms mean that year-to-year shifts can reduce or amplify perceived partisan patterns; a state with a high burden in one report may show improvement after a reform taking effect January 1, 2024, complicating a simple red/blue contrast.

4. Multiple reputable sources show consistent patterns but different emphases

Cross-comparing sources reveals consensus on certain high-burden blue states (e.g., New York, California) but disagreement on the broader pattern. WalletHub’s total-burden framing highlights blue states at the top ^[1], while structural indices such as the Tax Foundation’s competitiveness rankings emphasize which states have tax systems that attract activity regardless of partisan label ^[3]. A state “factbook” overview offers granular metrics and context for each state’s profile—useful for reconciling apparent contradictions when one source looks at marginal rates and another at total burdens ^[7].

5. Political labeling obscures intra-state variation and policy drivers

Labeling states simply “blue” or “red” ignores intra-state heterogeneity and recent policy shifts: some Republican-led states levy high property or sales taxes, while some Democratic-led states have cut rates or enacted rebates, making binary comparisons unreliable ^{[7] [4]}. Fiscal choices reflect priorities—investment in services, redistribution, or business competitiveness—so partisan control is an imperfect predictor of aggregate tax burden. Analysts must account for tax mixes, timing of reforms, and demographic or income differences that affect per-capita and share-of-income metrics.

6. How to answer the original question with nuance and evidence

The precise answer: many prominent blue states were among the highest-taxed on common 2024 measures, but blue states as a category do not uniformly have higher tax burdens than red states when you change the metric or control for recent reforms. WalletHub’s 2024 burden rankings support the “blue states higher” narrative for several large states ^[1], while Tax Foundation measures and state-level tax-structure data show substantial exceptions and caveats ^{[3] [2]}. Given tax law changes in 2024, the pattern is dynamic rather than absolute ^[4].

7. Bottom line for readers evaluating the claim themselves

If you need a firm conclusion: use multiple metrics—top marginal rates, overall tax burden as a share of income, per-capita collections, and tax-competitiveness indices—to judge whether a state’s tax burden is “high.” Reliance on a single 2024 ranking yields a partial picture; cross-referencing WalletHub, Tax Foundation, and state tax compilations provides a fuller, dated context for assessing whether a given blue or red state imposed higher taxes in the 2024 tax season ^{[1] [3] [2]}.