This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Utah ranks 21st in state and local tax burden, according to study conducted by the nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation.
While the ranking isn't bad for a Republican-dominated state whose leaders pride themselves on small government/low-tax philosophies, it's not all that great, either.
The study of fiscal year 2012 found that Utah's state and local taxes consume 9.6 percent of the state's income. The national average is 9.9 percent.
The state with the lowest tax burden is Alaska, at 6.5 percent of income, followed by South Dakota (7.1 percent), Wyoming (7.1 percent), Tennessee (7.3 percent) and Texas (7.6 percent).
New York has the highest state and local tax burden, according to the study, at 12.7 percent, followed by Connecticut (12.6 percent), New Jersey (12.2 percent), Wisconsin (11 percent) and Illinois (11 percent).
Utah's tax-burden ranking was one spot higher than Indiana (9.5 percent) and one spot lower than North Carolina (9.8 percent).
Per capita, Utahns pay $2,505 a year in state and local taxes.
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Utahns get your guns • In another survey, conducted by the online financial services and research organization WalletHub, Utah is the 14th-most dependent state on the gun industry.
Analysts looked at the arms and ammunitions industry in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia to determine which state depends most on gun businesses — directly for jobs and political contributions and indirectly through firearm ownership.
Criteria used by the researchers included industry jobs per capita, wages and benefits in the firearms industry, total taxes paid by the gun industry per capita and the level of weapon ownership.
Idaho emerged as the state most dependent on the arms industry, followed by Alaska, Montana, South Dakota and Arkansas.
Delaware was the least dependent, followed by Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York and Maryland.
WalletHub, citing a report from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, found the firearms industry contributed nearly $43 billion to the U.S. economy in 2014. It accounted for 263,000 jobs that paid $13.7 billion in wages. The federal government collected more than $5.79 billion in business taxes from the industry, plus $863.7 million in excise duties.
The WalletHub report also cited an analysis by left-leaning Mother Jones that estimated the cost of fatal and nonfatal gun violence at $229 billion in 2012.
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Speaking of guns • Nearly a year after being offered a special edition Utah Legislature commemorative AR-15 rifle for $750, many of those who placed the orders are just now getting the guns. But they have to pick them up at a gun shop.
Others received their rifles around Christmas, but one customer said he got his only after threatening to expose the whole deal as a scam.
I wrote last October about the guns not being delivered after Ryan Clarke of Tegra Arms, the manufacturer chosen to make the rifles, sent an email to prospective customers saying his company was dropping the contract because it had not been paid the money needed to cover its costs.
Jeremy Roberts, who was coordinating the project for the Legislature, said Clarke had told him as early as July that he needed payment or would have to back out.
Roberts said he couldn't pay him because many customers had not sent him their money. He instead found another manufacturer.
Because of a law against direct transfers of firearms, those who still haven't gotten their rifles have been told to pick them up at Discount Guns and Ammo in Salt Lake City.