Governor Mary Fallin

In her State of the State address, Governor Fallin laid out numerous areas where Oklahoma needs to invest to fix serious problems. She mentioned the shortage of troopers on the highways, the millions still owed to local governments to reimburse emergency expenses, the dilapidated state capitol and medical examiner’s office, crumbling bridges, high infant mortality, a beleaguered foster care system, and unfunded teacher health benefits.

These diverse problems have a common denominator: they are all substantially caused by inadequate funding to core public services after three straight years of budget cuts. Rather than setting a bold course for Oklahoma’s future, we are playing catch-up just to repair what we have allowed to fall apart.

In the same speech, Governor Fallin proposed a huge cut to the personal income tax. The plan is estimated to cost $350 million in the first full year. It also includes triggers to automatically cut taxes again any time the budget begins to recover.

The effect is that for the foreseeable future, tax cuts are shoved to the front of the line. It won’t matter what problems or responsibilities we face as a state. It won’t matter if our infant mortality stays high, if our water isn’t safe, if our schools are failing, if our communities are devastated by extreme weather. Whenever there is additional revenue, the number one priority will always be tax cuts. Read the rest of this entry »

Oklahoma Policy Institute Director David Blatt released a statement today in response to Governor Fallin’s plan for an immediate tax cut and ultimate elimination of the state income tax:

Governor Fallin’s plan would bust a huge and permanent hole in the budget. After three straight years of cuts to services, further tax cuts should not be a higher priority than educating our children, training our workforce, fixing our infrastructure, and ensuring public safety. The plan will make us less healthy, less safe, and less attractive to business.

Her proposal to stretch out the tax brackets to reflect modern income levels is a step in the right direction and an improvement on earlier plans from the legislature. However, by doing away with the child tax credit, sales tax relief credit, and other tax preferences that help hundreds of thousands of Oklahomans, the Governor’s plan would still unfairly increase taxes on many low and moderate-income seniors and families with children. We urge the Governor to seek more input from those who would be affected by these dramatic changes and work towards adopting tax policies that are fair to all Oklahomans and adequate to our state’s responsibilities.

For more information on the tax debate, see OK Policy’s tax reform information page at http://okpolicy.org/tax-reform-information.

Arthur Laffer

Some Oklahoma politicians have trumpeted a report by economist Arthur Laffer to claim that eliminating the state income tax will fuel an economic boom. Laffer is best known for the Laffer Curve, which he famously sketched on a napkin while meeting with Dick Cheney in a hotel bar. It went on to form the basis of the Reagan administration’s trickle-down economics.

The Laffer Curve makes an obvious point: government revenues peak at a tax rate somewhere between zero and one-hundred percent. In the lower half of the curve, raising taxes will increase revenue, but go too high and the reduced economic activity due to excessive taxation will result in lower revenue.

The argument was not original to Laffer. It had been stated previously by thinkers ranging from 14th Century Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun to John Maynard Keynes, the founder of modern macroeconomics. What made this idea influential in recent decades was not any special insight into economics, but its powerful appeal for politicians. Rather than explaining how tax cuts (popular) would be paid for by budget cuts or increases in other taxes (unpopular), they could simply claim that the tax cuts would pay for themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

[UPDATE: A previous version of the graph left out the Child Tax Credit from the list of broad-based credits that make up the 68 percent.]

In a recent interview with KWGS, tax reform task force co-chair Senator Mike Mazzei argued:

The folks that really should be displeased with our tax reform are not individual taxpayers at these low income levels, but the corporate folks that are going to lose a lot of their special interest breaks that have helped them subsidize their profit margins. When you asked about winners and losers earlier, those are the folks that are going to lose in this style of tax reform.

This claim is false. Based on the task force’s own numbers, broad-based tax preferences make up more than two-thirds of the funds targeted for elimination. That’s why Sen. Mazzei’s plan would raise taxes for a majority of Oklahomans. It’s why the real losers under this plan are not corporate special interests; they are families with children and low-income seniors. Read the rest of this entry »

Click for larger image.

A proposal by the legislature’s tax reform task force would raise taxes for most Oklahomans, with the worst impact on low-income seniors and families with children, according to a new fact sheet from the Oklahoma Policy Institute. The task force suggested paying for further cuts to the top income tax rate by ending numerous tax credits and exemptions relied on by low and moderate income Oklahomans.

An analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) reveals that if this plan were to take effect today, taxes would increase for 55 percent of Oklahomans. Only 31 percent of Oklahomans would receive a tax cut. There would be no change for 13 percent of Oklahomans, a group largely made up of childless singles and married couples with incomes smaller than the standard deduction. [Note: ITEP included about 3/4ths of the credits slated for elimination but did not model tax credits believed to be taken primarily by corporations.]

Among all households, the top 1 percent (those making $357,400 or more) would receive by far the largest benefit, with an average tax break of $2,833. The bottom 60 percent would see an average tax increase of $107. Read the rest of this entry »

This afternoon, the Senate Task Force on Comprehensive Tax Reform released its final report. The most significant recommendation is to make further cuts to the top rate and replace that revenue by ending numerous tax credits. Almost two-thirds of the tax benefits targeted for elimination do not go to special interests or favored industries, but to hundreds of thousands of taxpayers below a certain income level in order to offset regressive sales and property taxes. They would also end the personal exemption, which reduces the tax liability for every household in Oklahoma.

This proposal is a bad deal for hardworking Oklahomans. Doing away with broad-based tax benefits like the personal exemption, earned income tax credit, and sales tax relief credit in exchange for a cut in the top income tax rate would actually increase taxes for a majority of Oklahomans. This would hit hardest the poor and middle class families who are struggling most to make ends meet in a tough economy. Read the rest of this entry »

States are spending billions of dollars per year on corporate tax credits, cash grants and other economic development subsidies that often require little if any job creation and lack wage and benefit standards covering workers at subsidized companies.

These are the key findings of “Money for Something: Job Creation and Job Quality Standards in State Economic Development Subsidy Programs”, a 51-state “report card” study published today by Good Jobs First, a non-profit, non-partisan research center based in Washington, DC.

“With unemployment still so high, taxpayers have a right to expect that economic development investments create significant numbers of quality jobs,” said Good Jobs First Executive Director Greg LeRoy. “The days of ‘no strings attached’ are largely gone, but the fine print in many states is still full of gaps and loopholes.” Read the rest of this entry »

A comprehensive new study finds that many consistently profitable companies are paying little to no corporate income taxes on those profits. Out of 265 Fortune 500 companies examined, 68 managed to pay no state income tax in at least one out of the last three years, despite making almost $117 billion in pretax profits in those no-tax years.

These are among the findings in “Corporate Tax Dodging In the Fifty States, 2008-2010,” by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ). They find that 20 companies, including the Oklahoma natural gas giant Chesapeake Energy, averaged a tax rate of zero or less during the 2008-2010 period. Read the rest of this entry »

Ken Miller is State Treasurer and a member of the the Task Force for the Study of Tax Credits and Economic Incentives.  This originally appeared as an article in the November Oklahoma Economic Report and is reprinted with permission. For an earlier blog post on tax credit reform by Task Force co-chair David Dank, click here, and see this piece laying out OK Policy’s position.

Critics contend that if politicians are good at anything, it is studying something to death. While this legislative interim has been full of task forces and studies, many promise to be more than just simple academic exercises. True, some are meant to garner attention for a favored issue. Others are meant to bolster an opinion. And some are honest undertakings in search of good policy.

And there are some with elements of each of the above. Facing a December 31 report deadline, the Task Force for the Study of Tax Credits and Economic Incentives is preparing final recommendations.

It is this task force member’s hope that rhetoric and ideology will play a subordinate role to sound policy and economic reality. The task force recommendations can impact our business climate for years to come and must take into account the competitiveness of states in attracting industry and economic growth. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by flickr user zeuxis.pixelsurgery used under a Creative Commons license.

An idea floating around in the tax reform debate has been to swap tax credits for a reduction in the top income tax rate. That’s one of the motivations behind the tax credit task force, which has looked at reigning in a number of business and economic development tax credits.

Oklahoma also provides another kind of credit, directed not to favored industries, but to all taxpayers below a certain income level. Some lawmakers seem tempted to eliminate these as well. They should think again. Read the rest of this entry »

If all the recent talk about tax credits and exemptions and tax reform have left you scratching your head, you’re not alone.  Keeping up with the tax debate – and its accompanying jargon and terminology – can challenge even the most committed news-and-politics-junkie.  Fortunately, this glossary of key terms from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy can help.  The glossary accompanies ITEP’s updated ‘Guide to Fair State and Local Taxes‘.  Print it out and keep a copy handy for the next time you need to make sense of the state’s tax policies.  The glossary includes definitions like: Read the rest of this entry »

Rep. David Dank is co-chair of the Tax Credit Task Force. This is his 0pening statement to the Task Force’s meeting of November 9th. It is reprinted with permission and has been edited for length as indicated by [...] The full unabridged statement can be seen here. A column presenting OK Policy’s recommendations for tax reform that previously appeared on Oklahoma Watch can be seen here.

[…] The very first question we need to ask today is who we are representing here []

I think the only valid answer is, The Taxpayers.

Not the special interests who have benefited from many of these tax credits… and certainly not the few who have manipulated this system for personal gain.

I think we should also make a second thing clear today [] We are not against business. We don’t oppose growth. We believe that government policy can help create jobs. We don’t think all credits or incentives are bad.

What I think most of us believe after all we have heard here is that far too many tax credits and other incentives enacted in the past were created for the wrong reasons, and in the wrong way. Read the rest of this entry »