While fiscal policy in Washington has been deteriorating, there is some good news at the state level.

• In Part I of this series, I celebrated that top tax rates are declining.
• In Part II of this series, I celebrated that top tax rates are declining.

Today, in Part III, I’m going to do the same thing.

Adam Michel has a new report about state tax policy and there are two very informative visuals. Both of them are encouraging.

The first shows the distribution of top tax rates in states over the past 50 years. As you can see, tax rates in general are declining, with the average top rate dropping from 7.9 percent to 5.2 percent.

The next visual specifically compares the number of states with flat taxes and the number of states with discriminatory progressive tax rates.

There’s been a very positive shift, especially in recent years, to flat taxes.

The best state tax policy, of course, is to have no state income tax. Those states are not included in the above visual.

But I’m hoping that some of the flat tax states will join the no-income-tax club. The economic rewards will be significant.

I’ll close with one pessimistic observation. While many states are lowering tax rates and enacting flat taxes, a handful of blue states are opting for class-warfare tax policy (see Part I and Part II of my series on tax divergence and Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV of my series on state suicide).