Clearly the following conclusion is true. In fact it seems rather intuitive, but what is missing is the other side of the story; the fact that the poorest fifth receive much of this state discrepancy back at the federal level in the form of tax credits and for the lowest income SNAP and other benefits. Obamacare adds more subsidies for lower-income Americans.
Nevertheless, sales and property taxes which do not generally figure income in the mix do hurt lower-income people. (Some states do provide relief on property taxes for lower-income). Federal payroll taxes don’t help when they are taken on 100% of earnings for lower-income, but at retirement they receive a higher income replacement from Social Security than higher income individuals.
So what’s the point? The point is you can’t simply look in isolation at what may be perceived as a problem. The report below says “Unfair tax systems not only exacerbate widening income inequality…”
Aside from the irrelevance of “inequality” in this context, you must look at the total picture of income, taxes, and benefits to draw any conclusion about fairness.
Lower income people are going to be lower-income even if they pay no taxes of any kind. The problem is not lowering their taxes, or transferring more benefits to them. The problem to solve is how to help them no longer be low-income and in that effort they must be decidedly unequal partners with government. That is the toughest problem to solve.
When it comes to the taxes closest to home, the less you earn, the harder you’re hit.
That is the conclusion of an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that evaluates the local tax burden in every state, from Washington, labeled the most regressive, to Delaware, ranked as the fairest of them all.
According to the study, in 2015 the poorest fifth of Americans will pay on average 10.9 percent of their income in state and local taxes, the middle fifth will pay 9.4 percent and the top 1 percent will average 5.4 percent.
“Virtually every state’s tax system is fundamentally unfair,” the report concludes. “Unfair tax systems not only exacerbate widening income inequality in the short term, but they also will leave states struggling to raise enough revenue to meet their basic needs in the long term.”
via Study Finds Local Taxes Hit Lower Wage Earners Harder – NYTimes.com.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
In many states, property taxes are also “divorced” and not at all proportional to the “benefits” they fund. This is true of public education (for those without minor children, and those who use parochial schools without vouchers).
Sales taxes are a function of your purchasing activity, not your income. So, if you are financing your purchases out of accumulated wealth (retirees) or by using debt, instead out of current income, it would corrupt the comparison.
Last year I had a single sum income payout. It is financing spend this year and next. But, if you look at my 2014 data, my sales taxes are a modest percentage of my income, however, if you look at 2015, sales taxes are disproportionately higher because, among other reasons, I have scaled back to part time. So, there are year over year inconsistencies too.
Finally, such studies often compare tax data using incomes from, surprise, income tax filings … Where social security benefits are not included as income because they are not taxable (or only a portion is taxable).
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