Arkansas
Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center: Responsible Growth: Protecting the Public Interest with a Natural Gas Severance Tax
January 14, 2013
Currently, Pennsylvania is the only major fossil fuel-producing state that does not levy a mineral extraction, or severance, tax to recover some of the costs borne by citizens and to compensate them for the loss of a finite natural resource. Levying a tax on natural gas extraction will help achieve both of these goals. The […]
Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families: Revisiting the Arkansas Capital Gains Tax Cut: Is It Time to Reconsider?
January 14, 2013
In 1999, the Arkansas General Assembly passed Act 1005, legislation cutting the Arkansas capital gains tax. Since that time, recent events have dramatically altered the fiscal landscape at both the federal and state levels. In response to an Arkansas Supreme Court mandate, the Arkansas legislature enacted a large sales tax increase in 2004 to fund […]
Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families: Property Tax Reform for Arkansas
January 14, 2013
Few people would dispute that the local property tax on real estate and personal property is the most unpopular tax in Arkansas.1 The long history of political controversy around the property tax – with its continual constitutional amendments changing previous amendments – dates back almost 50 years to Amendment 47, which abolished the longstanding state-level […]
Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families: Raising the Sales Tax to Pay for Education: What Would Be the Impacts on Arkansas Families?
January 14, 2013
One of the major issues the Arkansas General Assembly will have to consider during its December special session is how to pay for education reform. According to a study adopted by the Joint Legislative Committee on Education, the cost of education reform will be $847 million annually. This estimate does not include the cost of […]
Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families: Tax Options for Arkansas: Funding Education After the Lake View Case
January 14, 2013
The fiscal demands of the Lake View case represent a daunting short-term challenge to Arkansas policy makers—but these short-term needs also provide an opportunity for lawmakers to craft tax reform solutions that will ensure the long-term solvency of Arkansas state and local governments. We hope that this report will prove useful to the citizens and […]
Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families: Capital Gains Tax Cuts Would Only Benefit Arkansas’ Super Rich
January 14, 2013
Cutting Arkansas’ already generous capital gains taxes would benefit only the super wealthy, with three quarters of the tax break going to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, according to an analysis by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.
Dallas Morning News: Report: Poor Texans shoulder heavy tax burden
January 8, 2013
(PDF of Original Post) 07:44 AM CST on Thursday, November 19, 2009 By ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning [email protected] AUSTIN – Texas’ low-income residents bear heavier tax burdens than their counterparts in all but four other states, a new study shows. The bottom fifth of Texas earners pay just over 12 percent of […]
The Providence Journal: Study suggests eliminating R.I.’s capital gains tax break
January 7, 2013
(PDF of the Original Post) 01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, March 21, 2009 By NEIL DOWNING Journal Staff Writer Rhode Island could save more than $49 million a year by eliminating the favorable tax treatment that the state currently allows on capital gains, a new report says. Rhode Island is one of only nine states […]
The Providence Journal: Some tax exemptions in other states border on ludicrous
January 7, 2013
(PDF of the Original Post) By RANDAL EDGAR Journal State House Bureau The tone was somewhat glum as the Poverty Institute held its annual state budget conference on Friday, in anticipation of Governor Chafee’s budget address this week, but there were some moments of levity. One came during a presentation by Meg Wieghe, of the […]
Missouri Record: ‘Fair Tax’ Anything But Fair
January 4, 2013
(PDF of Original Post) November 18, 2010 08:00 AM An issue likely to be debated in the 2011 Missouri Legislative Session is the proposal to replace state income tax—both individual and corporate—with a greatly expanded sales tax. Proponents of the legislation refer to it as the “fair tax,” but Missourians should think twice because it […]
St. Louis Business Journal: Missouri would not fare well under “fair tax”
January 4, 2013
(PDF of Original Post) by Amy Blouin Date: Friday, December 3, 2010, 5:00am CST If there’s an issue “most likely to be debated” in the 2011 Missouri legislative session, it’s a proposal to replace state income taxes – both individual and corporate — with a greatly expanded sales tax. Proponents refer to it as the […]
Tri-Parish Times: Will Jindal go for more sin taxes?
January 4, 2013
(PDF of Original Post) By TOM ASWELL During the 1988 presidential race, Vice President George H.W. Bush proclaimed, “Read my lips: no new taxes!” That famous line helped him defeat Michael Dukakis but when he was forced to back-track on that promise, it was his eventual undoing. Bill Clinton’s own pithy campaign slogan “It’s the […]
Arkansas Times: Appointment in Samarra
January 3, 2013
(PDF of Original Post) News that at least one Huckabee has moved to Florida arrived as we were pondering, more or less, a study showing that residents of states without state income taxes, such as Florida, pay more in federal income taxes than do residents of states that have an income tax, such as Arkansas. […]
Arkansas Times: Kicking the Poor Around
January 3, 2013
(PDF of Original Post) Kicking the poor around While Arkansas and five other states might be considered “low tax” states overall, their taxes aren’t low for poor and middle-income families, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington think tank. ITEP looked at data released earlier this summer by the Census Bureau […]
USA Today: Critics say states should discontinue tax holidays
December 21, 2012
Original Post August 6, 2011 by Jayne O’Donnell The back-to-school sales tax holidays that start Friday in many states may be popular with politicians and retailers, but critics say revenue-starved states should abandon them. Seventeen states plan to give shoppers a break on sales taxes for school-related purchases this season. Massachusetts and Arkansas added a […]
Clarion Ledger: Corporations already evading Miss. state income tax
December 19, 2012
5:51 PM, Dec. 15, 2011 Written by Bill Minor Among the outlandish bills sponsored by Republican lawmakers I had mentioned a couple of weeks ago was one that would have repealed (yes, repealed) the state income tax on corporations. It didn’t pass. Now don’t be surprised if the bill resurfaces when the GOP takes over […]
The Arka-Tech: There’s Lies, Damned lies, and there’s Romney’s 47 Percent
December 17, 2012
Written by Nicholas Tackett Saturday, 29 September 2012 17:29 Last week, remarks made by Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney came to light, and the results have not been pretty for the Romney campaign. These remarks formed a disparaging light on nearly half of the nation, casting 47 percent of people as ‘takers’ who depend on […]
Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan: A Widening Divide
December 17, 2012
(Original Post) By Nathan [email protected]: Saturday, December 1, 2012 12:58 AM CSTDoes it matter that income inequality is increasing in South Dakota? A report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Economic Policy Institute found that, between the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, the drop in income among the bottom 20 percent of […]
State governments provide a wide array of tax breaks for their elderly residents. Almost every state levying an income tax now sensibly allows some form of income tax exemption or credit for its over-65 citizens that is unavailable to non-elderly taxpayers. But many states have enacted poorly-targeted, unnecessarily expensive elderly income tax breaks that make state tax systems less sustainable and less fair. This policy brief surveys approaches to elderly income tax relief and suggests options for reforming state tax breaks for seniors.
One of the main economic goals of most state policymakers is, quite sensibly, to attract businesses to their state. But, all too often, these policymakers have been encouraged to think that tax cuts make the best bait. A growing body of literature reminds us that taxes themselves create public infrastructure that spurs investment and improves the quality of life for businesses and workers alike. Communities that illustrate a strong commitment to public institutions like good schools, well-built transportation systems, and quality police and fire protection will ultimately have an advantage in attracting new business investment. This policy brief looks at…
The property tax is the oldest major revenue source for state and local governments. At the beginning of the twentieth century, property taxes represented more than eighty percent of state and local tax revenue. While this share has diminished over time as states have introduced sales and income taxes, the property tax remains an important mechanism for funding education and other local services. This policy brief discusses why property is taxed and how property taxes are calculated.
Retail trade has been transformed by the emergence of the Internet. As the popularity of "e-commerce" (that is, transactions conducted over the Internet) has grown, policymakers have engaged in a heated debate over how state sales taxes should be applied to these transactions. This debate is of critical importance for state lawmakers because sales taxes comprise close to a third of all state tax revenues.
States Should Not Allow Amazon.com to Bully Them into Forgoing Sales Tax Reform
April 14, 2011 • By Carl Davis
In just the last few weeks, Arkansas and Illinois joined New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island in enacting legislation requiring some online retailers, like Amazon.com, to collect sales taxes on purchases made by their state’s residents. Vermont’s House of Representatives recently passed similar legislation, and Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New […]
The budget outlook for the states is improving, but uncertain. In this context, states must find ways to generate additional revenue that create neither additional responsibilities for individuals and families struggling to make ends meet nor additional distortions in the economy as a whole. For eight states – Arkansas, Hawaii, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, […]
