Low Tax Red States Dominate National Ranking Of Taxpayer Return On Investment

WalletHub has a ranking of states based on taxpayer return on investment. North Dakota comes in at #5, representing the fifth best return of government services for taxpayer dollars, and lower-tax red states with Republican leadership  took eight of the top ten slots.

The chart above plots the states on a grid contrasting tax burdens with quality of government services which WalletHub “separated into six main categories – Infrastructure, Education, Health, Safety, Economy and Pollution – that collectively consist of 27 metrics,” according to an explanation of their methodology.

Here’s the top ten, including 11 states with with two tied for 7th place:

As you can see, the key to success for most of the states in the top ten, er, eleven is lower taxes with relatively good outcomes for government services. The exception seems to be Massachusetts which manages high taxes and higher quality government services (at least as defined by WalletHub).

North Dakota’s neighbor to the east, Minnesota, actually comes out at $1 in the nation in terms of quality of government services, but because they rank 38th in tax burdens their overall ROI rank comes in at 17th.