The Tax Foundation does a lot of stuff right, but presenting data well isn't necessarily one of those things.

Here's an example. The Tax Foundation has ranked individual U.S. states according to various aspects of their business tax climate. Pretty interesting stuff, especially if you are a prospective business owner considering your options on where you might consider setting up shop, and especially if you're not one of those people who can influence enough state politicians to specifically exempt their business from those various state taxes. Like the way the film industry does.

But, if you go by the Tax Foundation's online state business tax climate rankings, you can expect to do a lot of scrolling to find out how a particular type of tax for a given state ranks. For example, if your business is particularly affected by property taxes, you'll need to scroll down to find that New Mexico is the leading state in that category for 2008. But you'll also find that the state doesn't rank very well in other categories that may be important to you, so you may not be all that enchanted with the Enchantment State!

Repeat the exercise for the Number Two state, and then you can see where you might be in for more analysis than you really ought to have to do!

If you're making real world decisions based on these rankings, what you really need is for the data posted online to do more than just sit there. What you need to really start cooking is to make the data move. And that's where we've come in! We've taken the Tax Foundation's 2008 State Business Tax Climate rankings and put them in the dynamic table below. You can instantly sort the data according the various rankings by clicking the column headings: clicking once will rank the data from highest to lowest, clicking again will rank the data from lowest to highest.

And that's it! Our dynamic table is just sitting here waiting for you. Which state's business tax climate cuisine reigns supreme is entirely up to you!

2008 Tax Foundation State Tax Climate Rankings

State	Overall Rank	Corporate Tax Index Rank	Individual Income Tax Index Rank	Sales Tax Index Rank	Unemployment Insurance Tax Index Rank	Property Tax Index Rank
Alabama	21	21	19	25	12	12
Alaska	4	26	1	5	47	22
Arizona	25	24	26	45	3	10
Arkansas	35	35	29	37	18	16
California	47	40	50	42	15	5
Colorado	13	15	13	11	20	15
Connecticut	38	17	18	30	19	50
Delaware	9	48	32	2	7	7
Florida	5	14	1	19	2	18
Georgia	20	6	24	16	22	33
Hawaii	22	9	43	17	23	4
Idaho	31	19	34	34	44	2
Illinois	28	29	12	32	42	40
Indiana	12	22	10	12	10	17
Iowa	45	45	45	20	37	31
Kansas	33	38	25	24	9	38
Kentucky	36	39	31	10	48	20
Louisiana	32	18	28	47	8	21
Maine	41	43	38	13	40	41
Maryland	24	7	37	7	30	39
Massachusetts	34	46	15	8	49	45
Michigan	29	49	14	14	45	25
Minnesota	42	44	39	40	39	19
Mississippi	18	8	16	35	5	32
Missouri	15	10	23	22	4	9
Montana	6	16	20	3	21	8
Nebraska	43	33	33	46	17	42
Nevada	3	1	1	43	41	13
New Hampshire	7	50	9	1	38	36
New Jersey	49	41	49	44	24	49
New Mexico	23	36	17	41	13	1
New York	48	23	41	49	46	43
North Carolina	40	25	44	39	6	34
North Dakota	30	27	36	29	26	6
Ohio	46	37	48	36	11	44
Oklahoma	19	13	22	31	1	24
Oregon	10	20	35	4	32	14
Pennsylvania	27	42	11	26	25	47
Rhode Island	50	34	47	33	50	48
South Carolina	26	11	27	18	43	29
South Dakota	2	1	1	38	33	11
Tennessee	16	12	8	48	31	35
Texas	8	47	7	28	14	27
Utah	17	5	30	27	28	3
Vermont	44	32	46	15	16	46
Virginia	14	4	21	6	29	23
Washington	11	31	1	50	36	28
West Virginia	37	28	40	21	35	26
Wisconsin	39	30	42	23	27	37
Wyoming	1	1	1	9	34	30

* Yes, we're fans of Iron Chef!

Labels: business, taxes

- posted by Ironman at 6:27 AM | Permalink |

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