US States With the Highest Share of Taxes From Occupation and Business Licences

51 US states ranked by share of taxes from occupation and business licences, from highest to lowest. First are South Dakota (3.34), New Hampshire (3.2) and Montana (2.97). The middle one of the 51 has 0.938.

What this measures

The percentage from job and business licences not listed anywhere else: the fees a state or city charges for permission to do business. It is a catch-all by design, so it shows how much a state licenses more than it measures any one tax. Source: Census government finances.

For most measures, a national ranking mostly sorts places by income and by how urban they are. Each county’s own page compares it with the 50 counties most like it instead, which is often the fairer view.

Every state

Rank	State	% of all taxes
1	South Dakota	3.34
2	New Hampshire	3.2
3	Montana	2.97
4	South Carolina	2.58
5	West Virginia	2.53
6	Virginia	2.48
7	California	2.33
8	Nevada	2.28
9	Delaware	2.25
10	Alabama	2.14
11	Pennsylvania	2.1
12	Tennessee	1.94
13	Oregon	1.88
14	Ohio	1.45
15	Florida	1.38
16	Washington	1.33
17	Maine	1.33
18	Wyoming	1.18
19	Wisconsin	1.15
20	North Dakota	1.14
21	Rhode Island	1.11
22	Nebraska	1.02
23	Idaho	1.01
24	Louisiana	1.01
25	Missouri	1
26	North Carolina	0.938
27	Arkansas	0.928
28	New Jersey	0.875
29	Michigan	0.844
30	Iowa	0.822
31	Illinois	0.79
32	Vermont	0.756
33	Georgia	0.713
34	Maryland	0.671
35	Kentucky	0.653
36	Massachusetts	0.642
37	Mississippi	0.638
38	Minnesota	0.591
39	District of Columbia	0.59
40	Arizona	0.569
41	Colorado	0.553
42	Kansas	0.544
43	New Mexico	0.493
44	Utah	0.472
45	Texas	0.455
46	Alaska	0.42
47	Hawaii	0.409
48	Indiana	0.346
49	Oklahoma	0.197
50	Connecticut	0.0997
51	New York	0.0834

More on share of taxes from occupation and business licences

A ranking describes places, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All US rankings.