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Show Utah Ranks High in Personal Income Going For State And Local Taxes Utah ranks ninth among the 50 states in the proportion of its personal Income going for state and local taxes, according to a research report Just completed by Utah Foundation, the private tax research organization. State and local tax collections in Utah during the 1961 fiscal year totaled $203 million, which amount was equal to approximately approxim-ately 11.87r of the personal income in-come of the state during the preceding calendar year. This percentage compames with 10.4 for the nation as a whole and 11.3?i for the eight Mountain States. According to the report, total state and local tax collections in fiscal 1961 were equal to $223 for every man, woman and child residing In the state. Utah ranked rank-ed 24th among the fifty states by this measure. Foundation analysts an-alysts observe, however, that because be-cause of Utah's high rr.wiiiage of population in the generally non-productive age groups (under (un-der 20 and 65 and over), per capita cap-ita taxes do not afford an accurate accur-ate picture of the relative tax burden of the state. In the more meaningful comparison of state and local tax per person in the "tax producing (20-64) age group, Utah ranked 13th in the nation. Utah's relative tax burden as a percent of personal income, in-creased in-creased slightly from 11.8 In fiscal 1961 to an estimated 12.1 In fiscal 1962. This rise was attributed at-tributed by Utah Foundation analyst an-alyst to tax changes enacted by the 1H61 Utah Legislature. The Foundation study points out that with the exception of gambling taxes, Utah imposes every major kind of tax levied in any of the United States. Because Be-cause of this broad tax coverage Utah's overall tax system is very similar to the profile of the composite com-posite tax structure of the Mountain Moun-tain States and the United States. Although Utah's tax structure is fairly typical of the region and the nation as a whole, the report devotes a much larger proportion of its state and local spending to education than most other states. In fact, Utah ranks first among the 50 states in its effort to support education with 47 of its overall state and local lo-cal budget going for education compared with 39 for the eight Mountain States and 34 for the fifty United States. Foundation analylsts observe that the principal factor in Utah's large expenditure for education is the heavy student load the highest in the nation for both public schools and colleges as a proportion of population. Despite the high tax effort for education, however, expenditures per student stu-dent in Utah is below the national na-tional average. |