Taxes and Weather

Around April 15th I think a lot about taxes. From November through April I think a lot about the weather. There are, therefore, a few weeks overlap between these two time periods which lead me to think about both weather and taxes.

Everyone hates paying taxes. In March, everyone in New England, after a long and miserably cold and wet winter, hates living in New England.

California has high taxes. It has a progressive state income tax. It also has great weather. Alaska has low taxes. It has no income tax. It also has awful weather. Do you think that in order to be incentivized to live in a miserable place like Alaska, people need to face lower taxes? Conversely, do you think that the government in California can charge higher tax rates because it takes a lot to deter people from soaking in the rays of Cali?

I did.

I decided to put together some data to see if there was a relationship between state and local tax rates and weather. For state and local tax rates I used data from the tax foundation at CNNMoney. For weather I looked at the average temperature for each state. I plotted the two against each other and found:



I was wrong

There seems to be no correlation between the two. Each dot represents a state and the red line is the trend line.

My results are hardly conclusive. Both variables aren’t very accurate. For taxes, it would be interesting to see average income tax, average sales tax and average property tax separately. For weather, I don’t think average temperature is the best measurement. It would be interesting to find some sort of "good weather index", one that takes into account rain fall, snow fall, temperature volatility, etc. If you find either of these, send it my way.

I suppose the reason there is no trend might be because there are different preferences in both taxes and weather. Some people prefer higher taxes and more public services; some people prefer lower taxes and fewer public services. Some people’s ideal world has snow year round, others (like me) would prefer month after month of highs in the 70s and 80s.

If you are looking for a mediocre 6th grade science fair project, feel free to plagiarize my idea and results.