A Place Of Opportunity...

Once again, South Dakota ranked as one of the top states that people are migrating to. According the Argus leader, inbound moves to South Dakota were at 57.3 percent, whereas outbound moves were at 42.7 percent. Compared to other states, we ranked sixth in the nation for inbound migration. Read more here…

Much of South Dakota’s attractiveness can be attributed to our low tax burden and lack of an income tax. There was a great article in the Wall Street Journal that compared North and South Dakota. Both states are very similar in resources, jobs, population, etc., but while we have many people coming into our state, North Dakota finds its residents leaving. Both states are similar in many ways, with the exception that we do not have an income tax here in South Dakota.

They say people vote with their feet, and people are leaving states with high taxes, despite the public luxuries those taxes fund, in favor of states like ours that offer greater individual economic opportunities rather than public assistance.

In essence, we are actually increasing the amount of dollars we can bring in as a state by keeping taxes low. Attracting more people to our state with low taxes increases our tax base, since we will have more people here to tax with the existing tax structure.