Amer­i­can pol­i­tics are dom­i­nat­ed by those with mon­ey. As such, America’s tax debate is dom­i­nat­ed by voic­es that insist the rich are undu­ly per­se­cut­ed by high tax­es and that low-income folks are liv­ing the high life. Indeed, a new sur­vey by the Pew Research Cen­ter recent­ly found that the most finan­cial­ly secure Amer­i­cans believe ​“poor peo­ple today have it easy.”

If altruism doesn’t prompt you to care about unfair tax rates and economic inequality, then it seems self-interest should.

The rich are cer­tain­ly enti­tled to their own opin­ions — but, as the old say­ing goes, nobody is enti­tled to their own facts. With that in mind, here’s a set of tax facts that’s worth con­sid­er­ing: Mid­dle-and low-income Amer­i­cans are fac­ing far high­er state and local tax rates than the wealthy. In all, a com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis by the non­par­ti­san Insti­tute on Tax­a­tion and Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy finds that the poor­est 20 per­cent of house­holds pay on aver­age more than twice the effec­tive state and local tax rate (10.9 per­cent) as the rich­est 1 per­cent of tax­pay­ers (5.4 percent).

ITEP researchers say the incon­gruity derives from state and local gov­ern­ments’ reliance on sales, excise and prop­er­ty tax­es rather than on more pro­gres­sive­ly struc­tured income tax­es that increase rates on high­er earn­ings. They argue that the tax dis­con­nect is help­ing cre­ate the largest wealth gap between the rich and mid­dle class in Amer­i­can history.

“In recent years, mul­ti­ple stud­ies have revealed the grow­ing chasm between the wealthy and every­one else,” Matt Gard­ner, exec­u­tive direc­tor of ITEP, said. ​“Upside-down state tax sys­tems didn’t cause the grow­ing income divide, but they cer­tain­ly exac­er­bate the prob­lem. State pol­i­cy­mak­ers shouldn’t wring their hands or ignore the prob­lem. They should thor­ough­ly explore and enact tax reform poli­cies that will make their tax sys­tems fairer.”

The 10 states with the largest gap between tax rates on the rich and poor are a polit­i­cal­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly diverse group — from tra­di­tion­al Repub­li­can bas­tions such as Texas and Ari­zona to Demo­c­ra­t­ic strong­holds such as Illi­nois and Washington.

The lat­ter state, reports ITEP, is the most regres­sive of all. Four years after bil­lion­aire moguls such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer fund­ed a cam­paign to defeat an income tax bal­lot mea­sure, Wash­ing­ton now makes low-income fam­i­lies pay sev­en times the effec­tive tax rate that the rich pay. That’s right, those in the poor­est 20 per­cent of Wash­ing­ton house­holds pay on aver­age 16.8 per­cent of their income in state and local tax­es, while Washington’s 1‑percenters pay just 2.4 per­cent of their income. Like many of the oth­er regres­sive tax states, Wash­ing­ton impos­es no per­son­al income tax all.

“The prob­lem with our state tax sys­tems is that we are ask­ing far more of those who can afford the least,” con­cludes ITEM’s state direc­tor Wiehe.

By con­trast, the states iden­ti­fied as hav­ing the small­est gap in effec­tive tax rates are Cal­i­for­nia, Delaware, Min­neso­ta, Ore­gon and Ver­mont — all Demo­c­ra­t­ic strong­holds and all rely­ing more heav­i­ly on pro­gres­sive­ly struc­tured income tax­es. Mon­tana is the only Repub­li­can-lean­ing state ITEP researchers iden­ti­fy among the states with the least regres­sive tax rates.

Of course, if you aren’t poor, you may be read­ing this and think­ing that these trends have no real-world impact on your life. But think again: In Sep­tem­ber, Stan­dard & Poor’s released a study show­ing that increas­ing eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty hurts eco­nom­ic growth and sub­se­quent­ly reduces pub­lic rev­enue. As impor­tant, the report found that the cor­re­la­tion between high inequal­i­ty and low eco­nom­ic growth was high­est in states that relied most heav­i­ly on regres­sive levies such as sales taxes.

In oth­er words, regres­sive state and local tax poli­cies don’t just harm the poor — they end up harm­ing entire economies. So if altru­ism doesn’t prompt you to care about unfair tax rates and eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, then it seems self-inter­est should.