Residential Taxation in Rhode Island Municipalities, Part 2

In the previous post on local resident taxation in Rhode Island, there is a group of distressed communities (and Bristol?) at the bottom of the percentage-of-resident-income levied list. The clustering raises a question worth addressing of whether total income is the appropriate basis for measuring the taxation level in very poor communities.

The argument for adjusting the straight percentage is that there are certain fixed costs to human existence that are at least as important as paying your taxes and that taxation should be measured against what's left after basic necessities have been taken care of. The argument against is that an adequate adjustment has already built into a percentage metric, i.e. 5% of Central Falls' income would rank equally to 5% of New Shoreham's income on the straight-percentage list, even though it means much less money from Central Falls, and a further adjustment will open the divergence even wider.

I will calculate one version of a additional poverty adjustment, and present it along with the straight percentage measures going forward.

The Federal government annually calculates poverty thresholds based on family size. The Census Bureau's American Community Survey for 2010 includes a 5-year-based estimate of the number of households by number of household members in each RI community. Combining these two data elements, the amount of aggregate income needed to reach the Federal poverty threshold in each community can be estimated. Subtract that figure from the total estimated income in a community, and the result is estimated income above the poverty threshold.

The aggregate poverty thresholds alongside total community income for each Rhode Island community are listed below the fold in Table 3.

Using income-above-poverty-threshold as the percentage denominator does noticeably change the rankings. Pawtucket and Woonsocket, in particular, move up from the bottom of the list, though West Warwick and Central Falls stay about where they were...

So now we have half of a story: how much do local governments collect from their own residents, measured in two different ways. Next we'll add the other half, and look at how much governments have to spend on their residents...

Table3: