In an article published today at Kansas Liberty, Holly Smith used Show-Me Institute’s newest web tool, IDEAS: Interactive Database for Economic Analysis and Synthesis, to analyze Kansas’ tax burden over time. Smith compares many fiscal figures for Kansas and other states in the Midwest. For example, she found that Kansas generated $104.3 from alcoholic beverages in 2007, which is more than its neighboring states. Missouri, in comparison, generated $32.26 million in 2007.

Using the IDEAS web tool, I restricted the selective tax rates on alcoholic beverages for Missouri and Kansas over time, and then exported this information to Excel to produce the following graphs:

Click graphs to enlarge.

Generally, residents of Missouri are taxed less on alcoholic beverages than residents of Kansas are taxed. Specifically, Missouri assesses lower tax rates on beer and spirits, but as of 2005, the state has higher tax rate on wine.

In an effort to encourage or to protest their economic and social situation, people tend to vote with their feet. This is why I included domestic net migration data for Kansas and Missouri in the second graph. The data show that Kansas has experienced negative net migration every year in the last decade (i.e., people are moving out of the state). Missouri experienced positive net migration during this period, except for 2008 (i.e., people are moving into the state).

Although these trends can be attributed to a combination of factors, it may be possible that the higher taxes on alcohol in Kansas influenced some marginal number of people to move out of the state, and the low taxes on alcohol in Missouri influenced people to move into the state.

I encourage our blog readers to play with the IDEAS web tool and determine to which states they would consider domestically migrating.