Missouri must answer Kansas' tax cuts
For as long as anyone can remember, Kansas and Missouri have been rivals.
It may have started in the Civil War era, but the Border War has never really gone away. You could not miss the antipathy every time the MU and KU football squads squared off at Arrowhead Stadium in recent years. But now Kansas has raised the stakes far beyond bragging rights.
It is aiming to bury Missouri — leaving the state hopelessly behind in terms of new business and capital formation.
Don’t believe it?
If so, that is only because our governor and most of our lawmakers and business leaders have yet to wake up to what has happened.
For many years now, the economic development agencies in both states have fought to a draw, poaching business from each other through targeted tax credits and other subsidies to induce individual businesses to move from one side of the border to the other.
Local governments have compounded the problem by offering tax incentives of their own to cater to a tiny contingent of well-connected companies, choking funds from libraries, schools, and other public services dependent on local tax revenues.
This high-stakes game was a win-some-lose-some proposition for both states, played out in a particularly frivolous way within the Kansas City metropolitan area when corporations moved a handful of miles one way or the other to gain a temporary tax advantage. Then Kansas got serious about economic growth.
In May, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signed the biggest tax cut in the state’s history. The new law cuts the top personal income tax by more than a point to 4.9 percent, well below Missouri’s top rate of 6 percent.
That would be cause enough for concern in Missouri if that was all Kansas had done.
But more boldly, Kansas cut its tax on the non-wage pass-through income of businesses such as limited liability corporations and subchapter-S corporations, reducing taxes on 191,000 Kansas businesses to a rate of zero.
Millions of small businesses nationwide are organized as LLCs and S-Corps that enjoy many of the legal benefits of a traditional corporation while being taxed like partnerships. A tax rate of zero on these businesses is awfully hard to beat, freeing capital for Kansas entrepreneurs to reinvest in their businesses and spend in the market.
The excitement brewing in Kansas does not have to stop at State Line Road. Missouri may not have the chance to be the “first” to embark on the sort of economic development revolution taking place in the halls of Topeka, but it does not have to be the last.
Significant and similar tax reductions and reforms are achievable in Missouri, if there is a political will for it in Jefferson City.
But what happens if Missouri does not act?
The state will almost certainly be left behind — not only by Kansas, but by other smart, pro-growth leadership across Missouri’s western border. This year, Nebraska cut its personal income taxes and has primed the pump for future reductions. Oklahoma is seriously considering phasing out its income tax entirely, including deep near-term rate cuts.
If Missouri lawmakers do not arm the state with sound, broad-based, free-market tax reforms of their own, the state risks economic defeat at the hands of her cross-border rivals in one of the most important games imaginable: the one that will determine our future prosperity.
We can turn this game around, but time is running out.
Brenda Talent, of Chesterfield, Mo., is executive director and Patrick Ishmael, of St. Louis, is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, a St. Louis-based free-markets public policy center.
George Hunsucker
Northland
7 months agoIf you can get this across to the libs at the star, you are super human beings!!!!
All the libs know is that there must be more spending in every facet of government, hiring more bureaucrats to make more rules and certainly spending more for education without giving people CHOICE via vouchers.
For the “proof” of the great lib experiment, look no further then the city of KC which cannot even repair its sewer system. Yup, libs know how to run things…. LOL
Mark Hastert
7 months agoConsidering that the Brownback plan is already falling apart it seems rash to follow Kansas down the garden path. Let’s give it a few years to see if for once tax breaks for the wealthy will provide any benefit to average citizens. My bet is that Kansans will not benefit.
I’m sure that Rex Sinquefield and other very wealthy people would be the greatest beneficiaries of this scheme. Mr Sinquefield is a major benefactor of the Show Me Institute. I’m equally sure that he does not have the best interests of the shrinking middle class at heart.
Phil Cardarella
7 months agoBy all means, let us engage in a Race to the Bottom!
Dear Rex:
You have enough meney. Seriously, quit listening to the sycophants who are soaking you by flattery.
If you really want to do something of value with the money that hard work and good luck have given you, get involved in reforming our drug laws. Think of all the money we could save in prison costs — and all the lives we would improve by NOT manufacturing felons of dopers.
Call me.
Phil