{"id":642938,"date":"2026-05-14T16:13:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T16:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/642938\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T16:13:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T16:13:14","slug":"republicans-plan-for-zero-state-income-tax-could-be-devastating-experts-warn-missouri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/642938\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans\u2019 plan for zero state income tax could be \u2018devastating\u2019, experts warn | Missouri"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hannah Rejali, 34, lived through the failed so-called \u201cKansas Experiment\u201d in the 2010s, when the Republican governor cut the state\u2019s income tax to try to give a \u201cshot of adrenaline<\/a>\u201d to its economy but instead left the state with a $900m budget shortfall.<\/p>\n

That meant, for example, that in 2015, at least eight school districts ended their academic year early<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou say, [former Kansas governor Sam] Brownback, to anyone on the Kansas side, and they shudder,\u201d Rejali said.<\/p>\n

Rejali now lives next door in Missouri, where Republicans<\/a> now also want to eliminate the state income tax. A mother of four, she worries that it would lead to a reduction in state funding for schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a public education standpoint, the income tax being removed would be pretty devastating,\u201d said Rejali, who lives in Kansas City and co-owns a marketing agency.<\/p>\n

Missouri is the first state in more than a century where a state legislature is asking voters whether to eliminate the tax, the Associated Press reports<\/a>. But the moves add to other Republican-led states across the country that have also recently passed legislation to phase out income taxes.<\/p>\n

While advocates say that the proposed Missouri<\/a> constitutional amendment \u2013 which the government would probably pair with a sales tax expansion \u2013 would attract new businesses and put extra money in the pockets of all residents, critics argue that it would hurt lower- and middle-income residents and only help the wealthy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe claim being made is that those high-income people will grow businesses or create jobs\u201d and \u201cthe benefits would trickle back down to everybody else\u201d, said Carl Davis, research director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning thinktank. \u201cThe reality is, this has been done at the national level and in many states, repeatedly, and it doesn\u2019t work that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to Missouri, lawmakers in Georgia<\/a>, South Carolina<\/a> and West Virginia<\/a> also recently approved bills to reduce state income taxes, with some Republicans pushing for them to eventually be eliminated.<\/p>\n

Americans for Prosperity<\/a>, a rightwing advocacy group funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, is one of the leading groups<\/a> pushing lawmakers around the country to eliminate state income<\/a> taxes.<\/p>\n

Rex Sinquefield, a St Louis investor, also backed a group that pushed for the Kansas income tax cut in 2012. At the time, he told the Wall Street Journal<\/a> that so many companies would relocate that \u201cthere will be a cloud of dust at the Missouri-Kansas border\u201d.<\/p>\n

He then donated millions to Republican Mike Kehoe\u2019s successful 2024 campaign for Missouri<\/a> governor.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhasing out the income tax would make Missouri more competitive, attract jobs and investment, and let workers keep more of what they earn from the start,\u201d Kehoe wrote in an op-ed<\/a> supporting the proposed amendment, which voters will decide on in August or November.<\/p>\n

Advocates for eliminating state income taxes often cite<\/a> the economic success of states like Florida and Texas, which are among nine US states that do not have such taxes.<\/p>\n

Dennis Ganahl, founder of Mo Tax Relief Now, said his son told him that he was moving to Florida or Tennessee because they didn\u2019t have an income tax.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, well, hell, stay in Missouri. I\u2019ll get you zero income tax,\u201d Ganahl said. \u201cSo he moved here, you know? And there are other people that have the same story in their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skeptics say that even if Missouri eliminates an income tax, more people won\u2019t necessarily move there.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t replicate Florida\u2019s climate and beaches in Missouri,\u201d Davis said. \u201cWe\u2019re not seeing folks necessarily flocking to South Dakota, for example. South Dakota doesn\u2019t have an income tax either.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eliminating an income tax also does not always benefit existing residents. In Kansas, five years after Brownback started his \u201cmarch to zero\u201d, the Republican-led Kansas legislature voted to roll back most of the tax cuts, overcoming the governor\u2019s veto.<\/p>\n

Unlike what Brownback and Sinquefield promised, the \u201ccore reality here is that state income tax cuts necessitate tradeoffs\u201d, Davis said.<\/p>\n

But proponents of the Missouri measure argue that their approach would prevent the state from repeating Kansas\u2019s mistakes because it\u2019s tied to \u201crevenue growth\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are not going to just all of a sudden start saying, \u2018OK, nobody has got to pay taxes,\u2019\u201d Ganahl said. \u201cWhat they are going to start doing is ensuring that there is revenue so that they gradually and incrementally drop the income tax.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ganahl played down the idea that the state will increase its sales taxes. The amendment instead just \u201copens up the constitution so that they can change the way Missouri raises its revenue\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

Instead, \u201cyou can close loopholes\u201d, Ganahl said.<\/p>\n

But the legislature already can reduce the state income tax, but it cannot, however, impose new sales taxes because in 2016 Missouri voters approved an amendment prohibiting the state from adding sales taxes to services or transactions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only reason for them to have this amendment is to allow for the sales tax to be greatly expanded; otherwise they don\u2019t need it,\u201d Amy Blouin, president and CEO of the Missouri Budget Project, which opposes the amendment.<\/p>\n

If the state does increase its sales taxes, that would hurt lower- and middle-income residents, who spend a bigger share of their earnings and already pay less income tax, so the reduction would make a negligible difference, Davis said.<\/p>\n

If the state increases its sales tax enough to recoup the revenue lost to its reduction in income taxes, people making between $49,000 and $80,000 would pay an average of $535 more annually, according to an Institute on Taxation<\/a> analysis.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the elderly aren\u2019t paying income tax, so\u201d an expanded sales tax is \u201cgoing to be an additional cost\u201d, said Missouri state senator Joe Nicola, a Republican who opposes the proposed amendment.<\/p>\n

The evidence that reducing or eliminating state income taxes attracts new businesses is also mixed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarginal tax rates generally have no impact on employment and statistically significant but economically small effects on the rate of firm formation,\u201d a 2015 National Tax Journal<\/a> report stated.<\/p>\n

Instead, when people in the top income bracket see their taxes cut, most of the savings get invested in the stock market, Davis said.<\/p>\n

To address concerns about schools losing money, the ballot measure asks whether the constitution should be amended to \u201cprotect local funding for public schools and other purposes\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the amendment only prohibits a \u201cpolitical subdivision\u201d from adjusting \u201clocal tax rates in a manner that results in any reduction in funding to any public schools\u201d.<\/p>\n

It does not say anything about education funding from the state, which is already running out of money<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ballot summary is very misleading,\u201d Blouin said.<\/p>\n

While Ganahl said the state had learned lessons from what happened in Kansas, there is a more recent cautionary tale of how even taking a slower approach to cutting state income taxes can cause pushback from residents.<\/p>\n

In North Carolina, the state government has gradually reduced<\/a> its income taxes since 2012. That has not protected public education.<\/p>\n

State funding per student has decreased from $9,053 in 2003 to $7,869 in 2025, according to the NC Budget & Tax Center<\/a>. It\u2019s also the only state where teacher salaries decreased between 2024 and 2025, the National Education Association<\/a> reports. Last week, thousands of teachers and supporters rallied in the state capitol to call for higher teacher pay, more school funding and higher taxes on corporations, the News & Observer reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Davis said the gradual approach allows the state to avoid a \u201csingular crisis moment\u201d.<\/p>\n

Instead, it \u201camounts to basically a frog in boiling water\u201d, Davis said. \u201cYou are ratcheting the income tax rate down and the quality of services gradually degrades, but it\u2019s in a less noticeable or flashy way than what we saw happen in Kansas.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hannah Rejali, 34, lived through the failed so-called \u201cKansas Experiment\u201d in the 2010s, when the Republican governor cut…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-642938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}