How Alaska and Wyoming Make People From Elsewhere Pay Their Taxes

Want to know the best way to lighten the tax burden on your state’s residents? Come up with taxes that will be paid mostly by people in other states.

Alaska charges a "severance" tax on oil extraction that ends up being paid by consumers of petroleum products in other states. The tax pulls in so much revenue that Alaska actually writes checks to families in the state every year. Wyoming, another resource-rich state, works the same angle–and in 2011, for the first time in several decades, it had a lower per-capita tax burden than Alaska.

By Peter Coy

Full Story: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-02/how-alaska-and-wyoming-make-people-from-elsewhere-pay-their-taxes#r=hpt-fs