Arthur Laffer recently teamed up with Stephen Moore, his friend on The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, to pen yet another opinion piece on the benefits of shunning progressive personal income taxes.  Most of the article’s so-called “analysis” is ripped from Laffer reports that we’ve already written about, but there was one new claim that stands out.  According to Laffer and Moore, “Georgia, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma are now racing to become America's 10th state without an income tax.”  If this is true, it’s news to us.  So let’s take a look at the most recent reporting on these states’ tax policy debates.

In Georgia, the state’s legislative session ended almost a month ago with the passage of a modest tax package.  Last year, Georgia lawmakers debated levying a flat-rate income tax, but that effort (which should have been easy compared to outright income tax repeal) failed and left lawmakers with little interest in returning to the issue.

The debate over the income tax debate in Kansas isn’t quite done yet, but the most recent news from The Kansas City Star is that “lawmakers say the tax reform package they'll consider next week almost certainly will fall far short of the no-income-tax goal.”

In Missouri, a number of media outlets are reporting that the push to get income tax repeal on the November ballot is all but over because a judge ruled that the ballot initiative summary that proponents of repeal proposed to put before voters was “insufficient and unfair.”

And in Oklahoma, what started as an enthusiastic push for big cuts or even outright repeal of the income tax has since been watered down into something less ambitious.  The most likely outcome is a cut in the top rate of no more than one percent, although lawmakers are still toying with the idea of tacking on a provision would repeal the income tax slowly over time (so the hard decisions about what services to cut won’t have to be made for a number of years).  But in any case, budget realities have left lawmakers in a position where they’re hardly “racing” to scrap this vital revenue source.

Photo of Art Laffer via  Republican Conference Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Missourians can write off up to $5,000 in federal income taxes paid ($10,000 for married couples) on their state income taxes. Missouri is one of only six states that offer this deduction and it cost the state about $400 million in 2011. Calling it a “costly tax code luxury that produces no noticeable public benefit,” the St. Louis Post Dispatch blasted the deduction in an editorial today.

The editors also note that State Representative Jeanette Mott-Oxford recently offered an  amendment to House Bill 1661 which would eliminate the deduction entirely, and that her legislation would significantly offset a crippling budget deficit which is projected to exceed $500 million next year.

In the House floor debate over her amendment, Representative Mott-Oxford cited the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s Topsy Turvy: State Income Tax Deductions for Federal Income Taxes Turn Tax Fairness on its Head. This 2011 report found that 83 percent of the benefit of the deduction goes to the top 40 percent of taxpayers in Missouri while those in the bottom 20 percent receive zero benefit from it.

In spite of its $5,000 cap (which makes Missouri’s deduction somewhat less irrational than other states’), treating federal income taxes as a deductible expense is costing the state eight percent of its income tax revenues and the figure will rise if federal income taxes on the wealthiest filers also rise, according to ITEP’s study.

Her legislation faces a daunting political gauntlet it’s not likely to survive, but Missourians should thank Rep. Mott-Oxford for pushing them closer to the day when this loophole is finally eliminated.

Calling it “a far-out idea that would force Missourians to pay much more for groceries, homes and everything in between, while sparing wealthy citizens the need to pay income taxes,” the Kansas City Star editorial board bids good riddance to an income tax repeal proposal in Missouri.

Apparently not content with the massive business tax cut enacted last year, Michigan lawmakers are continuing to push to repeal the property tax on business equipment – a vital revenue source for local governments who can expect a net, permanent 19 percent revenue loss.

Instead of an immediate income tax cut that will cost significant revenue (that the state can’t afford),  Oklahoma lawmakers are contemplating a “trigger” plan tying cuts to year-over-year revenue growth that would eventually eliminate the tax altogether.  The Oklahoma Policy Institute explains that triggers are sold as a “responsible” way to cut taxes, "but it’s the opposite. It’s an attempt to avoid responsibility by putting the tax system on auto-pilot.“

An important study from the Pew Center on the States showing the lack of accountability in tax giveaways to business keeps getting good press. Here’s a piece from Illinois describing how, despite some very public giveaways to companies like Sears and the CME Group, the state lags in holding companies accountable for the tax breaks they receive.

This great article explains who actually pays Minnesota taxes. It cites data from Minnesota’s own tax incidence analysis report – a report that only a handful of states have the technology to develop, but is vital to understanding how taxes impact people of different income levels.

We’ve written a lot about plans to eliminate Missouri’s income tax and boost the sales tax instead, spearheaded by anti-tax mastermind Rex Sinquefield.  He had hoped to put this radical plan before voters this November but the initiative’s advocates aren’t sure they can use the signatures they’ve gathered because of legal challenges.  The awful policy implications of the Sinquefield plan aside, this article explains how the ballot initiative process in Missouri has gone kablooey in recent years.   The 22 versions of the anti-income-tax initiative filed with the Secretary of State is in some ways an indictment of Missouri’s elected officials who have repeatedly refused to participate in serious tax reform debates.

With tax day just around the corner, Wisconsin Budget Project reminds us that working Wisconsinites who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit will actually see fewer benefits this year thanks to draconian cuts in the credit passed in the 2011-13 budget.

Maryland’s Senate President says that lawmakers “have an agreement” on a package of progressive personal income tax increases, but that they simply ran out of time to pass that package before last night’s midnight deadline.  Gov. O’Malley is expected to call a special session so that the increases can be enacted, but he has not done so yet.

Here’s a great read from The American Prospect that talks about the need to reform regressive state and local tax structures, citing ITEP research.

Last week Florida Governor Rick Scott signed into law legislation implementing a state sales tax holiday from August 3^rd to the 5^th even though these sales tax holidays are a real boondoggle for consumers (mostly PR for policymakers) and cost state treasuries needed revenues.

Will Missouri give tax credits to Ford for rehiring previously laid off employees? Read more about it in the Missouri Journal, which promises to follow up the story.

We’ve been closely following developments in the Kansas tax reform debate and here’s the latest update.  Last week, the conference committee began meeting to try to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate bill.  But compromise will have to wait until after spring break. The legislature adjourned and lawmakers won’t be meeting again until April 25. Read ITEP’s analysis of the Governor, House, and Senate plans.

Read here about an effort to end the Missouri – Kansas tax credit border wars (a.k.a. race to the bottom).  Hoping to create jobs within their borders, both states have been “willing to pay for it with tax credits and other deal sweeteners” that businesses have exploited – without necessarily delivering on the jobs.

Photo of FL Governor Rick Scott via Gage Skidmore Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Here’s a huge tax fairness victory in Iowa. The state Senate voted unanimously to increase the Earned Income Tax Credit from 7 to 13 percent of the federal credit to help working families make ends meet.

Matt Gardner, Executive Director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ( ITEP), blogs about lessons for Georgia from a new ITEP report on the economies of states with and without income taxes.  Gardner writes that Georgia lawmakers “wanting to join the non-income tax club are simply idolizing the wrong states.  Most states without income taxes are doing worse than average … and the states with the highest top tax rates are actually outperforming them.”

Also in Georgia, anti-tax guru Grover Norquist is weighing in on collecting taxes on internet sales, warning that it is a violation of his group’s “no new tax” pledge to vote for legislation requiring online retailers to collect sales taxes on purchases.  But the fact is, Georgians who shop online do, by law, have to pay the sales tax on those purchases if the e-retailer does not collect the tax, but the requirement is basically unenforceable.  Collecting taxes legally due is not a tax increase.

Missouri lawmakers are falling all over themselves to come up with revenues without “raising taxes” because the trust fund that pays for veterans’ services in the state is insolvent.  Silly “non tax” ideas being floated by legislators include casino entrance fees and a special lottery, which have already proven to be unsustainable revenue sources for veterans’ and other programs.  Missouri is notorious for its failure to tackle serious tax reform; will a backlog of military veterans in need of care give lawmakers incentive to do the right thing?

Bills in both the Iowa House and Senate are advancing that would finally raise the state’s long stagnant gas tax rate.  ITEP recently found that Iowa hasn’t raised its gas tax rate in 22 years, and that since that time the tax has lost $337 million in yearly value relative to rising transportation construction costs.

There are few areas of policy where lawmakers’ shortsightedness is on display as fully as it is with the gasoline tax.  Now, with a series of twenty six new charts from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ( ITEP), you can see the impact of that shortsightedness in most states as shareable graphs.

Overall, state gas taxes are at historic lows, adjusted for inflation, and most states can expect further declines in the years ahead if lawmakers do not act.  Some states, including New Jersey, Iowa, Utah, Alabama, and Alaska, are levying their gas taxes at lower rates than at any time in their history.  Other states like Maryland, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Wyoming will approach or surpass historic lows in the near future if their gas tax rates remain unchanged and inflation continues as expected.

These findings build on a 50-state report from ITEP released last month, called Building a Better Gas Tax.  ITEP found that 36 states levy a “fixed-rate” gas tax totally unprepared for the inevitable impact of inflation, and twenty two of those states have gone fifteen years or more without raising their gas taxes.  All told, the states are losing over $10 billion in transportation revenue each year that would have been collected if lawmakers had simply planned for inflation the last time they raised their state gas tax rates.

View the charts here, and read Building a Better Gas Tax here.

Note for policy wonks: Charts were only made in twenty six states because the other twenty four do not publish sufficient historical data on their gas tax rates.  It’s also worth noting that these charts aren’t perfectly apples-to-apples with the Building a Better Gas Tax report, because that report examined the effect of construction cost inflation, whereas these charts had to rely on the general inflation rate (CPI) because most construction cost data only goes back to the 1970’s.  Even with that caveat in mind, these charts provide an important long-term look at state gas taxes, and yet another way of analyzing the same glaring problem.

Example:

Note to Readers: Over the coming weeks, ITEP will highlight tax policy proposals that are gaining momentum in states across the country. This week, we’re taking a closer look at proposals which would lessen a state’s reliance on progressive income taxes, often by shifting to a heavier reliance on regressive sales taxes. 

Georgia – A legislative proposal gaining traction in Atlanta would undercut the state’s reliance on the personal income tax – its only major progressive revenue source.  It would make up those revenues by raising the sales tax – every state’s most regressive source of revenue.  The plan also includes two other components that hit the poorest Georgians the hardest: taxing groceries and adding a dollar to the cigarette tax.  A sensible, comprehensive proposal from the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute is the template lawmakers should be following. It starts with fairness, ends with increased revenues and is all about modernization and reform. 

Kansas – If the expectations about Governor Sam Brownback’s proposed income tax changes are right, Kansas could have a hard time balancing its books. Tonight, the Governor, (who has received technical assistance from supply side guru Arthur Laffer), is expected to propose drastic reductions to state income tax rates.  Details on how the governor plans to make up the lost revenue haven’t been revealed, but his sidekick Laffer was recently quoted as saying, “It’s a revolution in a cornfield. Brownback and his whole group there, it’s an amazing thing they’re doing. Truly revolutionary.”

Kentucky –  Fresh off his reelection to the Governor’s office, Steve Beshear is expected to propose his own tax reform plan, but Representative Bill Farmer, who’s been itching to change Kentucky’s tax code for years, has already pre-filed his own tax overhaul bill, which would slash the state income tax, expand the sales tax base to include more services and lower the sales tax rate.  ITEP conducted an in depth analysis of an earlier Farmer proposal and found that his proposal would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars and raise taxes on the poorest 20 percent of Kentuckians by an average of $138. We expect that his current proposal won’t do much to fix the state’s regressive tax structure either.

Missouri – Perhaps the most destructive proposal of this type gaining traction is Missouri’s mega-tax proposal, so called because it amounts to a massive consumption tax hike for ordinary Missourians. Proponents of the related ballot initiative that would eliminate the state’s personal income tax and replace that revenue by adding goods and services to the sales tax base are currently collecting signatures in an attempt to place the initiative on the ballot this November. Show-Me-Staters would be unwise to provide their signatures for this kind of campaign, however, because its passage would result in higher overall taxes for working families. Click here to see ITEP testimony on a similar proposal.

Oklahoma – Two seriously bad proposals that would increase the unfairness of Oklahoma’s tax system are currently under consideration. Working with (the aforementioned supply side guru) Arthur Laffer, the free-market Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs is proposing to eliminate the state income tax altogether. An ITEP analysis found that the bottom one-fifth of Oklahoma taxpayers -- those earning less than $16,600 per year -- would be paying on average $250 a year more in taxes, or about 2.5 percent more of their income. Similarly, the Tax Force on Comprehensive Tax Reform (dominated by business interests) suggests lowering the state’s top income tax rate and eliminating a variety of tax credits, many of which are designed to help low and middle income families. David Blatt, director of the non partisan Oklahoma Policy Institute recently said of the proposal, "This would hit hardest the poor and middle class families who are struggling most to make ends meet in a tough economy.”

Photo of Governor Steve Beshear via  Gage Skidmore and photo of Art Laffer via Republican Conference Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Naughty

Michigan’s legislature and Governor Snyder top the naughty list by giving away more than $1.6 billion in tax cuts for business and paying for it with tax increases on low-and middle-income working and retired families.

Florida continued to dole out more corporate pork this year, including a property tax break that happens to benefit huge commercial land owners, like Disney World and Florida Power and Light, and other corporations (that also happen to be major donors to the state’s Republican governor and legislative majority party).

Minnesota’s legislature missed an opportunity to do the right thing when it rejected a tax increase on the state’s wealthiest residents. The plan was proposed by Governor Dayton and supported by 63 percent of Minnesotans over the alternative, which was cuts to spending on education, health care and other vital public services.

Anti-tax activists in Missouri were hard at work again. This year they were collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would eliminate the state’s personal income tax and replace it with a broadened and increased sales tax.

Nice

Connecticut’s Governor Malloy and the legislature adopted a $1.4 billion tax increase that improved tax fairness in the state and protected public investments like education and health care.  Most notably, the state added an Earned Income Tax Credit, a significant tax break for low-income working families.

District of Columbia lawmakers greatly reduced the ability of corporations to dodge their fair share of taxes by adopting combined reporting (which makes it harder to hide profits in other states) and a higher corporate minimum tax. The Council also temporarily increased taxes for individuals making more than $350,000 a year and limited itemized deductions, which are most often taken by high income filers.

Hawaii lawmakers also limited upside-down tax giveaways (itemized deductions) for their state’s richest residents and passed other tax changes to raise much needed revenue.

A Little Bit Naughty and Nice

New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo reversed his campaign vow not to raise taxes and supported a tax increase on residents earning more than $2 million a year.   The plan, passed by the legislature, also included a tax break for those with income under $300,000.

However, New York lawmakers passed the governor’s cap on property taxes this summer, which is predictably creating crises and forcing dramatic cuts in local education, medical, and public safety services.

Illinois raised significant revenue earlier in the year through temporary personal and corporate income tax rate increases, all designed to stave off harsh spending cuts, but then turned right around and gave away hundreds of millions of dollars to Sears and CME, allegedly to keep them in the state.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch calls Missouri’s special legislative session that just wrapped up a fiasco. We’ve written about this saga of a special session that started September 6 and was convened with the promise of helping spur the Show Me State’s economy.  But from the Governor’s misguided  support for eliminating a credit that keeps seniors and the disabled in their homes, to the debacle of a plan to make the St. Louis airport a futuristic hub for freight between China and the Midwest, this special session was doomed by a growing skepticism among the state’s lawmakers that tax giveaways for businesses will help grow the state’s languishing economy. Sensibly, many lawmakers refused to accept new tax breaks unless procedures (such as sunsets) were put in place to make sure these tax breaks actually work.

Despite having clear majorities in the Senate (26-8) and House (105-54), the state's Republican lawmakers weren't able to get much done, and it’s one of those times that stalemate was actually a good thing. 

Photo of Missouri Capitol via David Shane Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

In the past year, Missouri lawmakers have grown increasingly skeptical about the effectiveness of business tax breaks in encouraging economic development. But the bad news is that during an ongoing special legislative session, some lawmakers have been eager to enact massive new tax breaks for a proposed cargo hub, optimistically dubbed “Aerotropolis,” to be located at the St. Louis airport, which is meant to lure overseas cargo shippers to Missouri.

With no apparent irony, some lawmakers want to use the revenues from repealing existing ineffective tax subsidies to pay for the proposed new “Aerotropolis” package. Fortunately, the same lawmakers who have voiced their opposition to existing subsidies are building a critical mass of skepticism about the new proposal. As Senator Jason Crowell put it, "We've come to a pretty firm conclusion, I believe, that the Missouri Senate will partner with you to create jobs. It will not partner with you to subsidize activity that may or may not create jobs."

It’s looking like some scaled down version of the original package is what will pass this month’s special session.

One other promising development: so far, the circuit breaker that protects low income and senior renters has survived, and efforts to repurpose that modest program’s costs for more business tax breaks have so far failed.

Photo via AFL CIO Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

A recent Kansas City Star editorial, “ KC’s taxes especially burdensome for the poor” argues for reforming that city’s tax structure. The article cites Tax Rates and Tax Burdens in the District of Columbia – A Nationwide Comparison put out by the D.C. government. This annual study takes a close look at the major taxes levied by large cities and, by creating hypothetical profiles of different kinds of households, it ranks their impact on individual family types with variations for income, filing status, available deductions, etc.

Kansas City, Missouri doesn’t fare very well in the report. In fact, the city’s tax structure asks low-income residents to pay more than their fair share. Kansas City does have a recently reinvigorated Citizens Commission on Municipal Revenue tasked with improving the city’s “financial problems and [to] ensure continuing city growth.” The findings of the D.C. report should play a large role in informing the Commission and improving the city’s tax structure.

The Kansas City Star should be commended for opining that, “the commission needs to focus on the already high tax burden on Kansas Citians — particularly on low-income residents.”

While Citizens for Tax Justice works largely on federal tax issues, and its partner, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy,  focuses on state tax systems, D.C.’s annual report on tax rates and burdens reminds us that there is important work to be done improving the tax structures of cities' too. 

For detailed profiles of state tax systems – which  are notoriously regressive and take more money, as a percentage of income, from the least well off families compared to the wealthiest – you can look at ITEP’s Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States.

Photo via Jimmy Wayne Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

The St. Louis Post Dispatch gets it all wrong when they title a recent article: “Jobs incentives in peril as special legislative session begins in Missouri.” True, Missouri’s special session started this week and, along with moving the date of the presidential primary and repealing a new law regarding teachers and students on Facebook, taxes are on the table.

But the tax incentives supposed to spur employment and economic development aren’t in any real peril. The state of Missouri seems to be chugging along without these controversial incentives, one of which would cost the state $360 million in an attempt to make the St. Louis airport a hub for freight between China and the Midwest.

No, the state’s property tax credit, designed to specifically help low income renters who are seniors and/or disabled, is the program in real peril. Some in the legislature and now Governor Nixon are proposing to eliminate this credit entirely.  The revenue gain from eliminating the property tax credit for these renters is $57 million, by far the largest cut proposed in the legislation.  

Last year, Nixon’s Missouri Tax Credit Review Commission proposed eliminating the credit, saying the credit "doesn't really do anything.”  But tell that to a woman who’d been trying to prepare her meals on a camp stove.  Brenda Procter, a University of Missouri extension specialist in personal finance, tells of informing this client she could expect a $600 credit and “she almost crushed me with a hug. She said, Oh, my God, I can buy a stove.”

Yes, this is the program where lawmakers decided to go looking for big revenue savings while simultaneously pursuing dubious tax incentives to make St. Louis some kind of “aerotropolis.”

There is some evidence the sponsor of the repeal bill might be rethinking complete elimination of the credit, however.  Senator Chuck Purgason recently said: "Republicans are always portrayed as taking from the poor and giving to the rich, and we didn't want to do that.”

Let’s hope Missouri Republicans and the legislature as a whole defy that stereotype and do right by the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

Photo via Missouri News Horizon Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Anti-tax lawmakers and activists in Kansas and Missouri continue to promote ideas to repeal their state income taxes and replace some of the revenue with a huge consumption tax. As ITEP’s Meg Wiehe explained in a recent Kansas City Star article, “A lot of education needs to happen around this issue. If you move to a consumption-based tax, the vast majority of taxpayers would likely pay more in taxes than they are under the income tax, except for the wealthiest.”

ITEP’s written testimony on one such proposal in Missouri  explains that only the richest 5 percent of Missourians would see a tax cut if the state’s personal income tax was replaced with a broad based sales tax, leaving the other 95 percent to pay higher taxes.

The corporate-controlled, anti-government American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) says approvingly that “Kansas and Missouri are at the top of the list” of states considering such proposals. To ALEC, ITEP’s estimates aren’t devastating at all. They recently claimed that “the downside of the tax swap appears to be minimal, if not non-existent.”

As a recent Kansas City Star editorial, warns, “The blessing of the council, known as ALEC, raises a red flag.”

In Kansas, Governor Sam Brownback has long been a proponent of eliminating, or at the very least, drastically reducing the state’s income tax. The Governor’s budget director anticipates that his budget for the new fiscal year will show “some significant (income tax) cuts”.

Missouri lawmakers have tried for the past couple of years to pass legislation that would eliminate the income tax entirely, but the legislation has not successfully passed both houses of the legislature.

Since cooler heads prevailed in the legislature, mega-rich troublemaker Rex Sinquefield has filed 11 ballot initiatives with the Secretary of State’s office that all do basically the same thing — eliminate state income taxes and replace the revenue with a broader sales tax. 

It’s expected that Sinquefield will eventually fund signature-collection for one of these ballot questions. If enough signatures are gathered, Missouri voters would likely be asked to decide about this radical shift in November 2012.

The proposals in Kansas and Missouri threaten those states’ ability to provide core and critical services because they would result in permanently lower revenue, while also tilting each state’s tax system even more heavily in favor of the well-off.

Photos via KDOTHQ Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

In September, Missouri lawmakers are expected to reconvene for a special session aimed at passing a jobs creation package to promote economic development. Legislation that increases corporate tax exemptions and general business incentives, though deeply flawed as policy, isn’t a novel concept.  Yet, leaders in Jefferson City are expected to do more than simply give money to corporations: lawmakers are actually planning to pay for these giveaways by revoking property tax credits for elderly and disabled renters.

The Associated Press reports that the legislation “would authorize tax breaks to attract international shippers to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.... It also would create incentives for science and technology companies, computer-based data storage centers and big-time amateur sporting events. And it would revamp existing programs so Missouri could offer incentives to retain companies being enticed by other states – a provision particularly intended counteract Kansas' efforts to lure companies from Kansas City, Mo.”

Of course, there is little evidence that these giveaways will actually produce jobs for Missourians, or expedite business decisions to expand in the Show Me State.

But, it’s been demonstrated repeatedly that programs like low income property tax circuit breakers, which mitigate the cost of property taxes, do produce results – and make an enormous difference in the budgets of low income folks.

Missouri lawmakers should take a serious step back and reexamine their intentions.  Taking property tax credits away from elderly renters to pay for dubious breaks for corporations isn’t a legacy lawmakers can feel proud of.

Photo via Tim 7423 Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0