California Ranks Dead Last in U-Haul Index for Sixth Consecutive Year

California ranks dead last — 50th place — in the U-Haul Growth Index released today.

This is the sixth consecutive year California has finished in last place. California imposes the highest top state income tax rate in the nation at 13.3 percent.

As noted by the company, the U-Haul Growth Index “ranks states by their net gain (or loss) of customers who rented a one-way truck, trailer or U-Box moving containers in one state and dropped off their equipment in another state.”

California appears determined to keep its 50th place ranking far into the future as it considers a confiscatory “one-time billionaire wealth tax” which will prove to be neither one-time nor limited to billionaires.

Regarding California’s sixth consecutive year of finishing dead last, Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist said: “No state is without value. Some serve as bad examples.”

The index shows Americans continue to move away from high-tax states in favor of low-tax and no-income-tax states.

Three of the top four states attracting movers have no personal income tax: Texas, Florida, and Tennessee.

The ten best ranked states in the index have significantly lower personal income tax rates than the index’s ten worst ranked states:

3.5 percent: Average top state personal income tax rate of the 10 best ranked states.

7.2 percent: Average top state personal income tax rate of the 10 worst ranked states.

Taxes matter: As a group, the 10 worst ranked states impose a top personal income tax rate more than twice as high as the 10 best ranked states.

(See ATR’s state tax map here)

The 10 best ranked states in the U-Haul Growth Index are Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Washington, Arizona, Idaho, Alabama and Georgia.

The 10 worst ranked states in the U-Haul Growth Index are Michigan, Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California.

The U-Haul rankings also show states attracting residents tend to be those that protect a worker’s freedom to decide for themselves whether or not to join a union.

Among the top ten performing states on the U-Haul index, nine of them have a Right-to-Work law that protects workers from being forced to pay dues to union bosses as a condition of employment.

Among the bottom ten states on the U-Haul index, NONE of them has a right-to-work law. All are forced unionism states.

“The U-Haul annual report lets everyone see which states are failing and which are succeeding as judged by actual Americans,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.