One thing that is odd about Connecticut and taxes is that CT can’t tax many of the highest earners. Everyone who works in NY state (Manhattan or Westchester or anywhere else) pays income taxes to Albany, not Hartford. Since NY state does not reciprocate income taxes with its neighbors, this means that all those people who ride Metro North trains to work every morning are not paying any income taxes to CT. Same with people driving over the border, but I guess there are enough people driving from NY into CT to kind of make the driving commuters a wash, or nearly so. There are a few train commuters who reverse commute, but nothing like what happens the other way. NJ also has this conundrum, and it’s why NJ is also more reliant on property taxes than most other states. In most other places, you pay taxes where you live first, and then you top off if the state you work in has higher rates (for example, if you made $100,000 in NY but were a CT resident, and the tax rate was 6% in CT and 8% in NY, you’d pay $6,000 to CT and then $2,000 to NY; however, in reality, you pay $8,000 to NY and $0 to CT).

I live in CT but my office is less than a mile over the border in Westchester county. I pay next to no state income tax to Hartford; it all goes to Albany. The only tax I pay to Hartford is for interest, capital gains and dividends, and so my income taxes I pay to Hartford are usually less than $50 per year. To top it off, despite the fact that I pay thousands in annual taxes to Albany, my kids wouldn’t be eligible for in-state tuition rates at SUNY. I of course pay property tax on my house and cars, but that stays in my local town.