Missouri
Missouri is Sleepwalking into a Half-Billion Dollar Tax Cut for the Rich
April 22, 2025 • By Carl Davis
Missouri lawmakers are debating a tax cut that will mostly benefit the wealthiest in the state, while relying on an unrealistic estimate of what it will cost.
Advantaging Affluence: A Distributional Analysis of Missouri HB 798’s Uneven Tax Cuts for Wealth and Work
March 28, 2025 • By Aidan Davis, Carl Davis, Dylan Grundman O'Neill, Eli Byerly-Duke, Matthew Gardner
Missouri House Bill 798 would reduce personal and corporate income tax rates, fully eliminate taxes on capital gains income from sale of assets, and eliminates the state’s modest Earned Income Tax Credit that assists many working people in lower-paid jobs. HB 798 would radically transform Missouri’s income tax code into a system that privileges income from wealth over income from work, leaving many middle-income families to pay a higher income tax rate than wealthy people living off their investments.
Proposed Missouri Tax Shelter Would Aid the Wealthy, Anti-Abortion Centers Alike
March 6, 2025 • By Carl Davis
In Missouri, donations to anti-abortion pregnancy resource centers come with state tax credits valued at 70 cents on the dollar. One bill currently being debated in the state would increase that matching rate to 100 percent—that is a full, state-funded reimbursement of gifts to anti-abortion groups.
Missouri: Who Pays? 7th Edition
January 9, 2024 • By ITEP Staff
Missouri Download PDF All figures and charts show 2024 tax law in Missouri, presented at 2023 income levels. Senior taxpayers are excluded for reasons detailed in the methodology. Our analysis includes nearly all (98 percent) state and local tax revenue collected in Missouri. These figures depict Missouri’s top income tax rate at 4.8 percent. The […]
Missouri Budget Project: Special Session Tax Proposal Leaves Out 1/3 of Missouri Taxpayers, Weighted to Benefit Wealthiest
August 28, 2022 • By ITEP Staff
Governor Parson’s recently released tax proposal would leave out about one-third of Missourians, including many of those who pay the highest proportion of their income in state & local taxes, and set the state up for a Kansas-like budget bomb that would require significant cuts to schools, public safety, healthcare, and other critical needs. Read […]
Missouri’s Creative Approach to Ending the “Race to the Bottom” in State Business Taxes
July 10, 2019 • By Matthew Gardner
Each year, state and local governments spend billions of dollars on targeted tax incentives—special tax breaks ostensibly designed to encourage businesses to relocate, expand or simply stay where they are. A law enacted by the Missouri legislature creates a template for states to work bilaterally to put the brakes on the “race to the bottom” in state business taxes.
Missouri Budget Project: Senate Tax Bills Provide Unfair Giveaways, Leave Communities Reeling
January 16, 2019 • By ITEP Staff
An analysis by the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy found that 91% of the tax cut would flow to the wealthiest 20% of Missourians.
Missouri: Who Pays? 6th Edition
October 17, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
MISSOURI Read as PDF MISSOURI STATE AND LOCAL TAXES Taxes as Share of Family Income Top 20% Income Group Lowest 20% Second 20% Middle 20% Fourth 20% Next 15% Next 4% Top 1% Income Range Less than $17,800 $17,800 to $34,100 $34,100 to $55,200 $55,200 to $93,100 $93,100 to $187,300 $187,300 to $447,300 over $447,300 […]
Tax Cuts 2.0 – Missouri
September 26, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. Now, GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called “Tax Cuts 2.0” or “Tax Reform 2.0,” which would make the temporary provisions permanent. And they falsely claim that making these provisions permanent will benefit […]
Building on Momentum from Recent Years, 2018 Delivers Strengthened Tax Credits for Workers and Families
July 10, 2018 • By Aidan Davis
Despite some challenging tax policy debates, a number of which hinged on states’ responses to federal conformity, 2018 brought some positive developments for workers and their families. This post updates a mid-session trends piece on this very subject. Here’s what we have been following:
Missouri Budget Project: Sales Taxes on Groceries & the Importance of a Refundable EITC
February 28, 2018 • By ITEP Staff
A state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), like the recently proposed Missouri Working Families Credit, could benefit as many as 515,000 working families with modest wages, providing hardworking families the ability to achieve a better future and a pathway to the middle class. By making the credit refundable, like the federal EITC and most other […]
State Rundown 1/12: Tax Cut Tunnel Vision Threatens to Bore State Budget Holes Even Deeper
January 12, 2018 • By .ITEP Staff
As states continue to sift through wreckage of the federal tax cut bill to try to determine how they will be affected, two things should be clear to everyone: the richest people in every state just got a massive federal tax cut, and federal funding for shared priorities like education and health care is certain to continue to decline. State leaders who care about those priorities should consider asking those wealthy beneficiaries of the federal cuts to pay more to the state in order to minimize the damage of the looming federal funding cuts, but so far policymakers in Idaho,…
How the Final GOP-Trump Tax Bill Would Affect Missouri Residents’ Federal Taxes
December 16, 2017 • By ITEP Staff
The final tax bill that Republicans in Congress are poised to approve would provide most of its benefits to high-income households and foreign investors while raising taxes on many low- and middle-income Americans. The bill would go into effect in 2018 but the provisions directly affecting families and individuals would all expire after 2025, with […]
How the House and Senate Tax Bills Would Affect Missouri Residents’ Federal Taxes
December 6, 2017 • By ITEP Staff
The House passed its “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” November 16th and the Senate passed its version December 2nd. Both bills would raise taxes on many low- and middle-income families in every state and provide the wealthiest Americans and foreign investors substantial tax cuts, while adding more than $1.4 trillion to the deficit over ten years. The graph below shows that both bills are skewed to the richest 1 percent of Missouri residents.
How the Revised Senate Tax Bill Would Affect Missouri Residents’ Federal Taxes
November 13, 2017 • By ITEP Staff
The Senate tax bill released last week would raise taxes on some families while bestowing immense benefits on wealthy Americans and foreign investors. In Missouri, 45 percent of the federal tax cuts would go to the richest 5 percent of residents, and 9 percent of households would face a tax increase, once the bill is fully implemented.
How the House Tax Proposal Would Affect Missouri Residents’ Federal Taxes
November 6, 2017 • By ITEP Staff
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was introduced on November 2 in the House of Representatives, includes some provisions that raise taxes and some that cut taxes, so the net effect for any particular family’s federal tax bill depends on their situation. Some of the provisions that benefit the middle class — like lower tax rates, an increased standard deduction, and a $300 tax credit for each adult in a household — are designed to expire or become less generous over time. Some of the provisions that benefit the wealthy, such as the reduction and eventual repeal of the estate…
GOP-Trump Tax Framework Would Provide Richest One Percent in Missouri with 57.0 Percent of the State’s Tax Cuts
October 4, 2017 • By ITEP Staff
The “tax reform framework” released by the Trump administration and congressional Republican leaders on September 27 would not benefit everyone in Missouri equally. The richest one percent of Missouri residents would receive 57.0 percent of the tax cuts within the state under the framework in 2018. These households are projected to have an income of at least $480,200 next year. The framework would provide them an average tax cut of $62,970 in 2018, which would increase their income by an average of 4.0 percent.
In Missouri 45.0 Percent of Trump’s Proposed Tax Cuts Go to People Making More than $1 Million
August 17, 2017 • By ITEP Staff
A tiny fraction of the Missouri population (0.5 percent) earns more than $1 million annually. But this elite group would receive 45.0 percent of the tax cuts that go to Missouri residents under the tax proposals from the Trump administration. A much larger group, 48.6 percent of the state, earns less than $45,000, but would receive just 5.7 percent of the tax cuts.
Trump Tax Proposals Would Provide Richest One Percent in Missouri with 50.3 Percent of the State’s Tax Cuts
July 20, 2017 • By ITEP Staff
Earlier this year, the Trump administration released some broadly outlined proposals to overhaul the federal tax code. Households in Missouri would not benefit equally from these proposals. The richest one percent of the state’s taxpayers are projected to make an average income of $1,587,000 in 2018. They would receive 50.3 percent of the tax cuts that go to Missouri’s residents and would enjoy an average cut of $101,580 in 2018 alone.
State Rundown 7/11: Some Legislatures Get Long Holiday Weekends, Others Work Overtime
July 11, 2017 • By .ITEP Staff
Illinois and New Jersey made national news earlier this month after resolving their contentious budget stalemates. But they weren’t the only states working through (and in some cases after) the holiday weekend to resolve budget issues.
St Louis Post: Missouri’s new governor will need new ideas to fix a broken tax structure
November 14, 2016 • By Dylan Grundman O'Neill
“Governor-elect Eric Greitens has bold tax-reduction plans for Missouri but vague budget-balancing ideas. He should pay attention to the advice of Dylan Grundman, a senior analyst with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington. Grundman warned the commission of ‘three paths to avoid.’ One is to cut income taxes in hopes of spurring […]
Columbia Daily Tribune: Open borders make America great
October 25, 2016 • By ITEP Staff
“And though there are competing analyses about whether unlawfully present immigrants contribute more to the economy than they cost in education and health expenses, what cannot be denied is that, according to the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, illegal immigrants contribute more than $11.6 billion to state and local coffers each year and […]
St. Louis Post Dispatch: Editorial: Tennessee as tax-cut role model? Never mind
July 22, 2016 • By ITEP Staff
“Tennessee’s gains are being subsidized by the poor and working class. The poorest 20 percent of Tennesseans pay 8.9 percent of their income on sales and excise taxes, according to the Washington-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The state’s richest residents pay just 1.2 percent.” Read more
Missouri Budget Project: Earned Income Tax Credit: The Basics
February 10, 2016 • By ITEP Staff
“A Missouri EITC would boost local communities and economies while encouraging work, enhancing take-home pay, and improving long-term health and economic outcomes for more than 500,000 Missouri families. A Missouri EITC would give a much-needed break to Missourians struggling to get by on low wages. A state EITC would boost local communities and economies while […]
Press Examiner: Day Back To School Sales Tax Holiday Underway
August 10, 2015 • By ITEP Staff
“So states that are not doing sales tax holidays, they’re certainly not missing out”. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, sales-tax holidays cost states about $300 million annually. Read more
