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A Kansas welcome sign is pictured.

If you want to be reckless in an ordinary crowded room, yell “fire.” If it is a room full of politicians, however, try yelling “taxes.” Indeed, there are some spirited tax debates — and maybe a couple of people fleeing for the exits — at the Kansas Legislature during its annual session that is underway.

That makes for good timing on a new national report that ranks the overall tax rates — income, property and sales taxes — for every state in the country. Likely, no savvy politician will tout Kansas’ rankings. The state, as has been the case for several years, ranks closer to the bottom of the list than the top. How far near the bottom it ranks, though, depends on how you break down the numbers in the report.

What doesn’t change with any breakdown, however, is that Kansas ranks as the highest tax state among all of our neighbors and also ranks highest in taxes for the entire area generally known as the Great Plains.

Here’s a look at the numbers. The broadest measurement done by the report’s authors — WalletHub, an online financial company — ranks Kansas No. 46 out of 51 (the report includes the states plus Washington D.C..) That No. 46 ranking uses local tax rates for income, property and sales taxes and calculates the total tax payment for an average household in each state. In this case, average is determined by national averages, i.e. the median national home value, the median national income, the national median for what a household spends on consumer items, and other such national data.

That ranking puts Kansas at No. 46 out of 51. The ranking calculated Kansas has an effective tax rate — the percentage amount a household pays in taxes compared to its income — at 13.76%. That’s the sixth highest such rate in the country. Illinois, by far, had the highest such rate in the U.S. at 16.58%. New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania also had higher rates than Kansas.

Those states seem significantly different than Kansas in many ways — larger and more urban . Here’s how Kansas compared to others in our region.

• No. 7 Colorado: 8.66%, $6,841 in state and local taxes

• No. 16 Missouri: 9.85%, $7,784

• No. 24 Oklahoma: 10.68%, $8,436

• No. 34 Arkansas: 11.62%, $9,182

• No. 44 Iowa: 13.14%, $10,384

• No. 45 Nebraska: 13.22%, $10,443

• No. 46 Kansas: 13.76%, $10,871

It is important to remember, though, that averages can be deceiving in these types of matters. Cost-of-living varies greatly from state to state. Home prices are much different on the coasts, for example, and there are many states that have greater average incomes as well. WalletHub’s report has a separate category that adjusts the tax rankings based on the state’s cost-of-living index.

That may be a more useful ranking, and Kansas does fare better when the state’s below-average cost of living is factored into the equation. In other words, this particular ranking uses the Kansas median income rather than the national, the Kansas median housing price rather than the national, and so on and so forth. While that improved Kansas’ standing, it still ranks in the bottom half of all U.S. states, and still is higher than any of the other states in our region. Here’s a look at those numbers.

• No. 7 Missouri: $6,472 in state and local taxes

• No. 12 Colorado: $8,668

• No. 18 Oklahoma: $6,361

• No. 21 Arkansas: $6,650

• No. 36 Iowa: $8,456

• No. 38 Nebraska: $9,003

• No. 39 Kansas: $9,090

What those numbers show is that the average Missouri household pays about $2,600 less in local taxes than the average Kansas household. Now, can you list $2,600 worth of reasons why living in Kansas is a better deal than living in Missouri? I bet I could, but maybe others can’t. That is a key to keep in mind. Comparing tax rates is one thing but comparing value is another. Not all the services provided in each state are equal, the quality of roads aren’t the same, and a host of other differences exist that are influenced by the amount of taxes each state collects.

But, money is money and the $2,600 difference is noteworthy. (A quick note on the rankings. Perhaps you are confused how Colorado ranks higher than Oklahoma, Arkansas and Iowa despite having a higher tax bill. That’s because Colorado also has a significantly higher median household income, and thus the average Colorado household pays a smaller percentage of their total income in taxes than those other states do, even though the actual dollar amount is higher.)

WalletHub conducts this ranking of state taxes every year. I don’t write about it every year, but I have written about it several times over the last decade or so. I pulled up the article from 2020 to see how much the rankings have changed for Kansas and our neighbors during that five year period. Here’s a look at those numbers, using the tax rates calculated with national averages.

• Colorado: No. 9 in 2020 vs No. 12 in 2025; effective tax rate up 0.08 of a percentage point

• Missouri: No. 28 vs No. 16; tax rate down 1.33 percentage points

• Arkansas: No. 30 vs No. 34; tax rate up 0.34 of a percentage point

• Oklahoma: No. 31 vs No. 24; tax rate down 0.72 of a percentage point

• Iowa: No. 43 vs No. 44; tax rate up 0.06 of a percentage point.

• Nebraska: No. 46 vs No. 45; tax rate down 0.10 of a percentage point

• Kansas: No. 47 vs No. 46; tax rate up 0.36 of a percentage point

As you can see, most states really didn’t change that much in the last five years, but Missouri was the exception.