If you only look at income tax brackets, that might explain your confusion because income tax is only one type of tax. On the other hand, sales tax tends to impact lower income people more than wealthy people because even though everyone may pay the same 5% sales tax, if you kept a ledger of all the sales tax everyone paid over the course of a year and compared it to everyone’s income, you’d find that as a percent of their income, lower income people paid more than wealthy people, which is why this article is saying some states’ tax structures are regressive, because when you look at the whole picture, not just income taxes but all types of taxes, the states that are “upside-down” tend to rely more heavily on sales taxes than income taxes to raise money.
If you only look at income tax brackets, that might explain your confusion because income tax is only one type of tax. On the other hand, sales tax tends to impact lower income people more than wealthy people because even though everyone may pay the same 5% sales tax, if you kept a ledger of all the sales tax everyone paid over the course of a year and compared it to everyone’s income, you’d find that as a percent of their income, lower income people paid more than wealthy people, which is why this article is saying some states’ tax structures are regressive, because when you look at the whole picture, not just income taxes but all types of taxes, the states that are “upside-down” tend to rely more heavily on sales taxes than income taxes to raise money.
The report published by the Institute of Tax and Economic Policy (which the article references) has more details if you’re interested enough to dig in further.
Thank you for the info and the additional reading