Something remarkable has been happening with state tax policy.

Red states have been slashing tax rates in recent years, making themselves more competitive.

Blue states, meanwhile, did nothing, which you might call a sin of omission.

But in the last year or two, they’ve decided to focus on class-warfare tax policy (something I’ve referred to as a “suicide pact”).

For instance, compare this table, which shows top tax rates for 2026.

Now compare that table to the one I prepared in 2018.

There’s been a remarkable shift, with many more states in the “Flat tax” column and far fewer states in the “Graduated Tax” column.

What’s remarkable is that blue states have not only decided not to compete. Many of them are actively making their tax systems more punitive.

The most absurd example is Washington, which adopted a class-warfare tax with a rate of 9.9 percent. And let’s not overlook California, which is considering a wealth tax.

Now we can add Maine to the list. Politicians just increased the top tax rate by 2 percentage points. Here’s the headline from a report by WGME.

I won’t even bother explaining why this is a dumb idea, though feel free to review the analysis from the Maine Policy Institute and the Tax Foundation.

My only comment is that I fully expect Maine to feature in a future edition of my Blue-to-Red Tax Migration series (you can read previous editions here, here, here, here, here, and here)