Hawai'i residents' tax burden is the fifth highest in the country when it comes to state and local tax levies, according to a new study by the Tax Foundation, a Washington-based group that monitors tax issues.

The foundation said Hawai'i residents will pay out $4,920 in state and local taxes this year. That represents 10.6 percent of their income and ranked Hawai'i behind only New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Maryland.

The foundation has studied the tax load shouldered by state residents for the past 18 years and annually releases a ranking. This year it determined local residents paid $3,699 in taxes to Hawai'i state and county governments, with another $1,221 going to other states for such things as sales taxes when people are on vacation, income taxes while temporarily working in another state and property taxes on second homes maintained elsewhere.

Lowell Kalapa, head of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii, a tax research group not affiliated with the national Tax Foundation, said he believed the new ranking probably is an accurate representation of the tax burden here.

The national group looked at per-capita payments of taxes as a percentage of per-capita income to come up with its ranking.

"What we've always talked about is that about one-third of income goes to federal, state and local taxes," Kalapa said, explaining about 20 percent of income goes to federal taxes, with another 10 percent going to state and local levies.

"I think the Tax Foundation number is pretty accurate."

He said that what people pay to state and local government may be higher because agencies are increasingly charging residents fees, such as a $5 emergency medical service fee that's charged when people register vehicles or the bottle deposit fee.

Kalapa said Hawai'i isn't the only state guilty of turning to fees instead of raising taxes, but that tax researchers may have a difficult time quantifying the costs.

The report by the Tax Foundation also shows: