Is it better to live in a state with no income tax? It's a great question to ask -- especially while you pore over tax forms this year. Seven U.S. states currently don't have an income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming. And residents of New Hampshire and Tennessee are also spared from handing over an extra chunk of their paycheck on April 15, though they do pay tax on dividends and income from investments.
The 9,800 troops in Afghanistan are just a fraction of the U.S. military across the globe. President Barack Obama announced Thursday that the U.S. will maintain the current number of troops in Afghanistan through most of 2016, decreasing to 5,500 by the end of next year, instead of removing most military personnel by the end of his presidency.
In Europe, there are 116,000 US military personnel including 75,603 who are stationed in Germany. In Central Asia about 1,000 are stationed at the Ganci (Manas) Air Base in Kyrgyzstan and 38 are located at Kritsanisi, in Georgia, with a mission to train Georgian soldiers. In the Middle East (excludng the Iraq war theater) there are 6,000 US military personnel, 3,432 of whom are in Qatar and 1,496 in Bahrain.