Kentucky
Reality Interrupts the Fever Dream of Income Tax Elimination in Kentucky
June 27, 2024 • By Eli Byerly-Duke
Keeping the Kentucky income tax on a march to zero would mean tax hikes for working families or widespread cuts to education, health care, and other public services. Reversing course is certainly the wiser course of action.
Recent Tax Cuts Have Expanded Inequality in the States
March 11, 2024 • By Jon Whiten
Some states have improved tax equity by raising new revenue from the well-off and creating or expanding refundable tax credits for low- and moderate-income families in recent years. Others, however, have gone the opposite direction, pushing through deep and damaging tax cuts that disproportionately help the rich. Many of these negative developments are quantified in […]
Kentucky Center for Economic Policy: Local Sales Tax Amendment Could Lead to Wider Inequality Without Better Funding Local Services
November 17, 2023 • By ITEP Staff
Under Kentucky’s constitution, there are limits on the types of taxes the General Assembly may authorize local governments to levy, and local sales taxes are not allowed. The 2024 General Assembly may take the first step toward changing that if it considers an amendment to the constitution that would grant the legislature broader authority on […]
Kentucky Center for Economic Policy: Reducing the Income Tax Will Weaken the Commonwealth
January 25, 2023 • By ITEP Staff
House Bill 1 in the 2022 Kentucky General Assembly is the next step in a legislative effort to phase down and even eliminate Kentucky’s income tax. This policy path is quite likely the most dangerous ever considered in the modern history of the commonwealth. It marches toward elimination of the source of 41% of state […]
Kentucky Center for Economic Policy: 10 Ways the Kentucky General Assembly Can Advance Race Equity and Shared Prosperity
February 15, 2021 • By ITEP Staff
HB 356, sponsored by Rep. Lisa Willner, would go a significant way toward cleaning up Kentucky’s tax code of the many tax breaks that benefit wealthy, predominately white Kentuckians — and would raise over $1 billion in needed revenue annually to invest in equitable and prosperous Kentucky communities. Currently, the state’s tax system plays an […]
Kentucky Center for Economic Policy: Tax Plan Would Fix Kentucky’s Budget Challenges by Addressing Upside Down Tax Code
February 13, 2020 • By ITEP Staff
Kentucky’s current tax system lets those with the greatest ability to pay taxes contribute the least as a share of their income. A study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that low- and middle-income people pay between 9.5% and 11.1% of their income in total state and local taxes, while the top 1% pay […]
Kentucky Center for Economic Policy: New Report Shows Kentucky’s Tax System Worsens Income Inequality
October 18, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
In Kentucky, the income inequality that exists between our poorest and wealthiest residents is magnified by the structure of our tax system. And thanks to the new tax law enacted by the 2018 General Assembly, that problem is getting worse.
Message-Inquirer: Tax Study Explores ‘Who Pays?’ in Kentucky
October 18, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
A new study from a national economic policy research group suggests Kentucky’s tax structure has become less equitable since the last General Assembly's tax reform legislation, putting more tax obligation on poor and middle-class Kentuckians.
Kentucky Center for Economic Policy: New Report: Wealthiest Kentuckians Pay the Lowest Tax Rate and the Problem Is Worsening
October 17, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
The study, Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, evaluates the major components of state and local tax systems – including personal and corporate income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes and other excise taxes – for their overall distributional impact across income groups. For example, Kentucky’s low income tax credit means that people in poverty do not pay state income taxes. However, because the state fails to provide refundable tax credits to offset sales, excise and property taxes paid by low-income people, and because the state has a flat as opposed to graduated income…
Institute on Taxation
and Economic Policy
ITEP is a non-profit, non-partisan tax policy organization. We conduct rigorous analyses of tax and economic proposals and provide data-driven recommendations to shape equitable and sustainable tax systems.
Subscribe to ITEP Emails
Tax research and policy news in your inbox.
Promote Fair Tax Policy
Your gift to ITEP promotes tax justice. With your help, we do research that supports taxing millionaires and billionaires, taxing big corporations and raising revenue for the things our people, our communities and our planet need.
Together, we can create a country with more economic justice, more racial justice, more climate justice… and more tax justice.