New Mexico taxpayer ROI (return on investment) worst in nation

It’s never a surprise when New Mexico comes in at the bottom of a good list or the top of a bad one, so the latest Wallethub report which ranks states based on their Return on Investment (ROI) to taxpayers. Sadly, dead-last is nothing new for New Mexico which came in dead-last in the 2025 version of this report. Categories in the report included: 1) Education, 2) Health, 3) Safety, 4) Economy and 5) Infrastructure & Pollution. Once New Mexico’s standing in each of those categories were ranked the authors compared each state’s “Overall Government Services Score” to its “Total Taxes Paid per Capita” to determine ROI.

The chart below is quite telling. New Mexico alone is in the “high tax, bad services” quadrant (nearly off the chart). California is the only state anywhere near us. New Hampshire, on the other hand, has no income tax and no sales tax and yet has excellent government services. In fact, the top-3 performing states in terms of ROI (New Hampshire, South Dakota and Florida) are all zero income tax states while some of the worst performing states (California, Hawaii, and New York) are among the highest tax states in the nation.

To say that New Mexicans are not getting their money’s worth for the terrible government “services” they receives is a massive understatement. Sadly, unless voting patterns change it is hard to see how New Mexico improves its ROI by either reducing taxes or improving government services or some combination of the two.