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Show UTAH TAX BILL FOR '62 WAS $579 MILLION Utahns paid an estimated $579 million in federal, state and local taxes, according to a research study just completed by Utah Foundation, the private pri-vate tax research organization. This tax total, which includes "hidden" as well as direct taxes, is equal to $616 for every ev-ery man, woman and child residing re-siding in the state, or $2,464 for an average family of four persons. Nearly 32c out of every dollar of personal income in-come earned by individuals in the state last year went for taxes. Foundation analysts observe that Government is the largest single force in the Utah economy. econ-omy. Although it takes the largest slice of personal income, in-come, it also is the biggest contributor to the state's economy. econ-omy. In 1961, nearly 24 of all personal income received by individuals in Utah was derived de-rived directly from government sources. In addition to these direct government payments in the form of wages, benefits, subsidies, etc., a significant part of Utah's private spending spend-ing is based on government contracts with private firms. According to the Foundation report nearly one out of every four persons employed in non-agricultural non-agricultural jobs in 1962 was working for some unit of government. gov-ernment. Of the 292,352 persons per-sons employed in nonagricul-tural nonagricul-tural jobs in Utah during June, 1962, a total of 68,102 were working for government. This included 30,822 civilian employees em-ployees of the Federal Government, Govern-ment, 13,214 state employes, and 24,066 local employees, including in-cluding the schools. The study also observes' that in addition to these government workers, approximately 31 of Utah's private manufacturing work force is employed in the missile mis-sile and defense industries. The year-end summary of government prepared by the Foundation observes that Utah makes a greater effort to support sup-port public education than does any other state in the United States. But Utah also leads the nation in the proportion of its population enrolled ' in the public schools and colleges. As a result, despite Utah's high tax effort to suport education, the amount of funds availablo per student is below the national na-tional average. In analyzing other aspects of state and local government during dur-ing 1962, the Foundation points out that Utah continues to provide pro-vide monthly public assistance grants that are slightly above the national averages for most categories of public assistance. In the highway field, the report re-port notes that Utah has spent over a quarter of a billion for new state highway construction construc-tion during me past ten years. This sum is almost twice the amount expended for roads during the previous 57-year history of the state. |