Kansas
State Rundown 3/27: Spring Bringing Smart State Tax Policy So Far
• By ITEP Staff
Though a long winter and a rough start to spring weather have wreaked havoc in much of the country, lawmakers are off to a good start in the world of state fiscal policy so far. In the last week, a progressive revenue package was passed in the nick of time in NEW MEXICO, a service-sapping tax cut was vetoed in KANSAS, and a regressive and unsustainable tax shift was soundly defeated in NORTH DAKOTA. Meanwhile, gas tax updates…
State Rundown 3/14: Tax Fairness Proposed in Illinois
• By ITEP Staff
More than three billion dollars could be raised under a major progressive tax plan proposed by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker this week, the point being to simultaneously improve the state’s upside-down tax code and address its notorious budget gap issues. One state, Utah, may already be looking at a special session to revisit the sales tax reform debate that ended this week without resolution, in contrast to Alabama and Arkansas, where leaders finally resolved years-long…
State Rundown 2/27: Temperatures and Tax Fights Continue to Polarize
• By ITEP Staff
As another polar vortex heads for large swaths of the country, state tax debates this week were highly polarized in another way. Lawmakers and advocates in MICHIGAN, OHIO, OREGON, UTAH, and elsewhere fought to enact or improve state Earned Income Tax Credits to give a boost to low- and middle-income working families. But the opposite extreme was heavily represented as well, as others pushed for regressive tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations, including in…
State Rundown 2/20: February and Regressive Tax Cuts, The “Meanest Moons of Winter”
• By ITEP Staff
Tom Robbins called February “the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behavior that grows quickly old.” Observers of state fiscal debates might think he was writing about similarly tiresome regressive tax cut proposals, which recently succeeded in Arkansas and advanced in North Dakota despite…
State Rundown 2/14: We ♥ Taxes!
• By ITEP Staff
Happy Valentine’s Day to all lovers of quality research, sound fiscal policy, and progressive tax reforms! This week, some leaders in ARKANSAS displayed their infatuation with the rich by advancing regressive tax cuts, but others in the state are trying to show some love to low- and middle-income families instead. WISCONSIN lawmakers are devoted to tax reductions for the middle class but have not yet decided how to express those feelings. NEBRASKA legislators are playing…
Trends We’re Watching in 2019: Attempting to Double Down on Failed Trickle-Down Regressive Tax Cuts
• By Lisa Christensen Gee
It’s always troubling for those concerned with adequate and fair public finance systems when states prioritize tax cuts at the cost of divesting in important public priorities and exacerbating underlying tax inequalities. But it’s even more nerve-racking when it happens on the eve of what many consider to be an inevitable economic downturn.
Trends We’re Watching in 2019: Consumption Taxes: the Good, Bad and the Ugly
• By ITEP Staff
Consumption taxes are a significant source of state and local revenue, and we expect that lawmakers will continue to adjust state consumption tax levies to adapt to budget needs and a changing economy.
Trends We’re Watching in 2019: Addressing Lingering Federal Conformity Questions and Opportunities
• By Dylan Grundman O'Neill
In our last update on state responses to the federal tax cut (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or TCJA), we noted that several states were waiting until 2019 to make their final decisions, giving them additional time to (hopefully) respond in ways that improve their fiscal situations and upside-down tax codes. The TCJA is affecting the 2018 federal taxes people are filing now, in some cases adding urgency and/or confusion to these debates.
State Rundown 1/31: Governors and Teachers Dominate Headlines, Much More in Fine Print
• By ITEP Staff
Gubernatorial addresses and the prospect of teacher strikes continued to take center stage in state fiscal news this week, as governors of Connecticut, Maryland, and Utah gave speeches that all included significant tax proposals. Meanwhile, teachers walked out in Virginia, and many other states debated school funding increases to avoid similar results. State policymakers have many other debates on their hands as well, including what to do with online sales tax revenue, how to cut…
State Rundown 1/18: Governors’ Speeches Kick Off State Fiscal Debates
• By ITEP Staff
Gubernatorial speeches and budget proposals dominated state fiscal news this week, as governors proposed a wide array of policies including positive reforms such as Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) enhancements in CALIFORNIA, a capital gains tax on wealthy households in WASHINGTON, and investments in education in several states. Proposals to exempt more retirement income from tax, particularly for veterans, are a common theme so far this year, having been raised in multiple states including MARYLAND, MICHIGAN, and SOUTH CAROLINA. And NEW JERSEY became…
A Simple Fix for a $17 Billion Loophole: How States Can Reclaim Revenue Lost to Tax Havens
• By Richard Phillips
Enacting Worldwide Combined Reporting or Complete Reporting in all states, this report calculates, would increase state tax revenue by $17.04 billion dollars. Of that total, $2.85 billion would be raised through domestic Combined Reporting improvements, and $14.19 billion would be raised by addressing offshore tax dodging (see Table 1). Enacting Combined Reporting and including known tax havens would result in $7.75 billion in annual tax revenue, $4.9 billion from income booked offshore.
Who Pays and Why It Matters | MECEP Policy Insights Conference Keynote Address
• By Aidan Davis
States have broad discretion in how they secure the resources to fund education, health care, infrastructure, and other priorities important to communities and families. Aidan Davis with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy will offer a national perspective on state-level approaches to funding public investments and the implications of those approaches on tax fairness and revenue adequacy, and their economic outcomes. She’ll also provide insight on what’s in store for 2019 among the states.
State Rundown 1/10: States Should Resolve to Pursue Equitable Tax Options
• By ITEP Staff
This week we released a handy guide of policy options for Moving Toward More Equitable State Tax Systems, and are pleased to report that many state lawmakers are promoting policies that are in line with our recommendations. For example, Puerto Rico lawmakers recently enacted a targeted EITC-like credit for working families, and leaders in Virginia and elsewhere are working toward similar improvements. Arkansas residents also saw their tax code improve as laws reducing regressive consumption…
State Rundown 12/5: Familiar Questions Returning to Fore as 2019 Approaches
• By ITEP Staff
State lawmakers are preparing their agendas for 2019 and looking at all sorts of tax and budget policies in the process, raising many familiar questions. Oregon legislators, for example, will try to fill in the blanks in a proposal to boost investments in education that left out detail on how to fund them, while their counterparts in Texas face the inverse problem of a proposed property tax cut that fails to clarify how schools could…
State Rundown 11/16: Election Results Clarify Agendas as Real Work Begins
• By ITEP Staff
State policymakers, voters, and observers have been reflecting on this year’s campaigns and looking ahead to how the policy opportunities in their states have shifted as a result. For example, Arkansas’s governor sees a fresh chance to slash income taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents, while the governor-elect of Illinois will be doing just the opposite, launching into a promised effort to shore up the state’s budget by asking the wealthy to pay more. New…
State Rundown 11/8: Top Tax Takeaways from Tuesday
• By ITEP Staff
Tuesday’s elections shook up statehouses, governors’ offices, and tax laws in many states, and in this week’s Rundown we bring you the top 3 election state tax policy stories to emerge. First, voters in Kansas and other states sent a message that regressive tax cuts and supply-side economics have not succeeded and are not welcome among their state fiscal policies. Meanwhile, residents of many other states, including most notably Illinois, voted for representatives who reflect their preference for equitable, sustainable…
Kansas Center for Economic Growth: Kansans of Color Often Pay More Than Their Fair Share of Taxes
• By ITEP Staff
Kansans believe in fairness. However, a recent study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and the Kansas Center for Economic Growth finds that the lowest-income Kansans are contributing a higher share of their income to fund our priorities. Without an equitable tax structure, we will struggle to make necessary investments in great […]
State Rundown 10/18: States Learn “Who Pays”!
• By ITEP Staff
Policymakers and residents in all 50 states and the District of Columbia got new ITEP data this week on how their tax structures and decisions affect their high-, middle-, and low-income residents. As our “Who Pays?” report outlines, most state and local tax codes exacerbate economic inequalities and all states have room to improve. The data can serve as an important informative backdrop to all state and local tax policy debates, such as whether to…
Associated Press: Kansas Governor’s Race is Referendum on Notorious Tax Cuts
October 18, 2018
The argument over taxes is likely to dominate the campaign’s final weeks; it is playing out in television ads and was a persistent theme Tuesday. Tax cuts appeal to voters in a GOP-leaning state like Kansas, but the fiscal problems that followed Brownback’s tax experiment made Kansas a memorable cautionary tale across the U.S. “It’s […]
Topeka-Capital Journal: New Study: Kansas’ Tax Policy Ranks as 23rd Most Regressive in the Nation
October 17, 2018
A 50-state study of tax systems found Kansas’ lowest-income residents pay 1.5 times more in taxes as a percent of income compared with the wealthiest residents, ranking the state 23rd in the nation on an equity index. “State lawmakers have control over how their tax systems are structured,” said Meg Wiehe, the institute’s deputy director and a study author. “They can and should enact more equitable tax policies that raise adequate revenue in a fair,…
Kansas Center for Economic Growth: New Analysis: Tax Reform Reduces Inequality for Kansans, but Low-Income Taxpayers Still Pay 1.5 Times the Rate Paid by the Richest
• By ITEP Staff
A new study released today by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and the Kansas Center for Economic Growth finds that the lowest-income Kansans pay 1.5 times more in taxes as a percent of their income compared with the state’s wealthiest residents.
Kansas: Who Pays? 6th Edition
• By ITEP Staff
KANSAS Read as PDF KANSAS 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 $21,500 $21,500 to $39,800 $39,800 to $62,700 $62,700 to $102,600 $102,600 to $206,900 $206,900 to $479,200 over $479,200 […]
ITEP Comments and Recommendations on Proposed Section 170 Regulation (REG-112176-18)
• By Carl Davis
The IRS recently proposed a commonsense improvement to the federal charitable deduction. If finalized, the regulation would prevent not just the newest workarounds to the $10,000 deduction for state and local taxes (SALT), but also a longer-running tax shelter abused by wealthy donors to private K-12 school voucher programs. ITEP has submitted official comments outlining four key recommendations related to the proposed regulation.
State Rundown 10/4: Ballot/Election Season in Full Swing
• By ITEP Staff
South Carolina lawmakers have finally passed a federal conformity bill in response to last year’s federal tax-cut legislation. Voters in many states are hearing a lot about tax-related questions they’ll see on the ballot in November, particularly residents of Florida, Montana, and Oregon, where corporate donors and other anti-tax interests are spending major sums to alter policy in their states. And states continue to work on ensuring they can collect online sales taxes and, in…
Twelve States Offer Profitable Tax Shelter to Private School Voucher Donors; IRS Proposal Could Fix This
• By Carl Davis
A proposed IRS regulation would eliminate a tax shelter for private school donors in twelve states by making a commonsense improvement to the federal tax deduction for charitable gifts. For years, some affluent taxpayers who donate to private K-12 school voucher programs have managed to turn a profit by claiming state tax credits and federal tax deductions that, taken together, are worth more than the amount donated. This practice could soon come to an end…
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