Obama is talking tax fairness. How does Massachusetts fare?

US President Barack Obama delivered the State of the Union address on Tuesday. Mandel Ngan/Associated Press/Pool

Some tax proposals are designed to raise money. Others are meant to lower taxes and put more money in people’s pockets. The proposal President Obama introduced in his State of the Union address would actually do both, raising taxes on the wealthiest households in order to lower them for lower- and middle-income families.

The basic idea is to make the US tax system more fair. As Obama put it, “We need a tax code that truly helps working Americans trying to get a leg up in the new economy.”

But what about here in Massachusetts? Do we have a tax system designed to support workers and the middle class?

In Massachusetts, lower-income people actually pay more of their money in taxes. If you are a middle-class family in Massachusetts, more than 9 percent of your income goes to state and local taxes, according to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy. If you’re among the very wealthiest, it’s more like 5 percent.

Why do the poor pay more?

There are a couple reasons that lower-income families end up paying more in state and local taxes:

1. The state relies heavily on its sales tax, which disproportionately affects lower-income people. Think of it this way: If you earn $30,000 a year, you need to spend most of that money just to make ends meet, and that means you’re paying sales tax on a large portion of your earnings.

By contrast, those who earn $500,000 don’t have to spend it all. And they don’t pay sales tax on the dollars they save or invest.

2. The income tax is the same for everyone, 5.15 percent. That’s different from the federal system, where people with higher incomes move into different brackets and end up paying higher rates.

That alone is no special burden for lower-income people, but it’s no help either. Whereas the federal income tax helps ensure that richer households end up paying larger amounts, the state income tax doesn’t do as much to rebalance Massachusetts’ tax system.

Is it possible to change this?

If the people of Massachusetts wanted to make tax fairness a priority, they would have a few options.

They could push for a change to the income tax, adding brackets and trying to ensure that wealthier families did actually pay a larger share. But there’s one big problem: It violates the state Constitution. So any effort to push the income tax in this direction would require not just a new law but a constitutional amendment.

Alternatively, the state could increase the capital gains tax, which is what investors pay when they sell stock. That tax used to be 12 percent, but it was reduced as part of the broad package of tax cuts put in place around the turn of the millennium.

Beyond these, there are also ways to reduce taxes on workers, including the Earned Income Tax Credit and other valuable deductions.

Are there reasons to prefer the current system?

Just because lower-income families pay more of their money in taxes doesn’t necessarily mean that the system as a whole is tilted against them. It depends on what the government does with that money. Given the right mix of state programs, it’s possible for even the most slanted tax system to produce equitable results.

One example of this is the value-added tax in Europe. You can think of the VAT as a more involved kind of sales tax, and like the sales tax it hits poor people especially hard. But many European states use that money to provide vital supports for workers and families, so it may not be enough to look just at the impact of the tax.

Where does that leave Massachusetts?

Tax fairness is a bigger issue in Massachusetts than in the nation as a whole. But one upside is that because you can address tax fairness without actually raising taxes — just by shifting who pays — it’s open to solutions from all corners: left and right, Democrat and Republican, tax lovers and tax loathers.