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 »

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 »

Last week we reported that next year’s revenues are expected to be 7 percent below their levels of six years ago (FY ’07), even though costs are higher due to inflation, population growth, and increased caseloads

Elsewhere, people seem to have read a different budget estimate than the one we saw. Two elements of the discussion show a growing disconnect between Oklahoma’s budgetary politics and reality.

First, Governor Mary Fallin and many others continue to advocate for reduction or elimination of the state income tax. A closer look at the budget shows that, of the $400 million forecast revenue growth from FY ’11 to FY ’13, fully  half comes from the income tax. Overall, the income tax is expected to provide $2.5 billion next year for General Revenue, the HB 1017 Education Reform Fund, and the ROADS Fund, which has helped restore the worst of our roads and bridges. Cutting this vital revenue support makes no budget sense. It also makes no economic sense. Read the rest of this entry »

While some state leaders continue to discuss making top-down cuts to the income tax or eliminating it entirely, a new OK Policy issue brief shows why that policy is ill-advised.

Before the economic downturn, the income tax brought in more than $2.5 billion a year. In FY 2010, it made up about one-third of all state tax collections. It is the single largest source of support for education, health care, transportation, public safety, and other necessities. The state could not provide basic, essential services without income tax revenue unless other taxes were drastically increased.

The issue brief shows that shifting to greater reliance on other taxes would disadvantage local business, create more risk of revenues not being adequate to needs, and put a disproportionate burden on low- and moderate-income Oklahoma families. Contrary to the claims of its critics, Oklahoma’s income tax is not a hindrance to the state’s business climate or a spur for people to move out of state. In fact, Oklahoma is out-competing most states that lack an income tax.

After three years of repeated cuts to the state budget, the state has fallen further behind in funding teacher salaries and benefits, staffing our prisons and juvenile facilities, and ensuring the safety of children at risk of abuse and neglect, among other vital functions. We face growing obligations to fund our public pensions, protect our water system, repair our crumbling infrastructure, and take care of an aging population. In this context, cutting the income tax is the wrong priority for Oklahoma’s future.

You can download the full 8-page issue brief here. Find more presentations, fact sheets, blog posts, op-eds and newspaper articles addressing Oklahoma’s tax reform debate here.

What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk is dedicated to this week’s events, publications, and blog posts.

This week OK Policy released a paper showing that state costs under the new federal health care law are likely to be modest and could even yield net savings.  Click here to access a 1-page summary of our issue brief: Health Care Reform and the State Budget: Savings Likely to Partly or Fully Offset Modest New Costs.

OK Policy testified this week before the Joint Committee on the Federal Health Care Law.  Click here for our presentation exploring Oklahoma’s options for implementing state health insurance exchanges, a major requirement of the new law.  Read the Tulsa World’s coverage of our paper along with a summary of the committee meeting. Read the rest of this entry »

ConocoPhillips headquarters in the Energy Corridor area of Houston

Why do some companies choose to locate their businesses  in Texas rather than Oklahoma? During the first two meetings of the Task Force on Comprehensive Tax Reform, co-chair Representative David Dank has stated repeatedly that the absence of the personal income tax accounts for the cases where Texas wins out in relocation and investment decisions.

Finding hard evidence to support his case, however, has proven elusive. At a recent Task Force meeting, Wes Stucky, CEO of the Ardmore Development Authority and a widely respected leader in the economic development field, spoke of his long-standing efforts to bring investment and jobs to Ardmore. Stucky told the Task Force:

For 24 years, I’ve been conducting interviews with executives of companies that we tried to recruit to Ardmore that ended up locating elsewhere. Not once in all those years did a company that rejected Ardmore base its decisions on taxes. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk is dedicated to this week’s events, publications, and blog posts.

This week at OK Policy, we interviewed Steven Dow about recent controversy at the Oklahoma Commission for Human Services.  We pointed out that state leaders can’t rely on growth revenue to fund infrastructure repair and other priorities if they continue to cut (or even eliminate) the income tax.

Former State Treasurer Scott Meacham explains on the OK Policy blog that Oklahoma’s Rural and Small Business Tax Credit initiatives end up costing the state hundreds of millions in tax revenues.  The blog also featured a post on asset-building as an anti-poverty strategy.  Our director David Blatt was a guest this week on Studio Tulsa, discussing the importance of the income tax in adequately funding state government and essential services for Oklahomans.  Oklahoma Policy Institute’s director was also quoted in two articles this week on federal income tax liability for low-income households and the role of unemployment benefits during a recession.

In the Know, Policy Notes

• Tthe Economix blog examines whether it is more cost-effective to direct resources to college students or to preschoolers and kindergarteners in order to increase college completions over the longer term.
• Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder discover that immigration is correlated with falling crime rates.
• Bloomberg reports on how municipalities and state agencies, including the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, are taking advantage of historically low interest rates to refinance bond issues and save money.
• The National Employment Law Project warns that if Congress doesn’t renew extended unemployment insurance by the end of this year, we risk plunging millions into deeper financial crisis and putting yet another obstacle in the path of economic growth.
• The National Academy of State Health Policy released a paper detailing efforts by state agencies to identify and act on racial and ethnic health disparities.

Numbers of the Week

• 16.43 inches – Amount statewide average precipitation was below normal this water year (October 1-September 30), the 2nd driest year on record for Oklahoma.
• 1,865 – Number of foreclosures in Oklahoma in August, down 5.8 percent from the same month in 2010
• $31,600 – Minimum amount in salary and fringe benefits earned by a first-year Oklahoma public school teacher with a bachelor’s degree, 2011-2012
• 80.3 – Number of primary care physicians per 100,000 people in Oklahoma, compared to 120.5 nationally.  Oklahoma ranked 49th in availability of primary care physicians, 2010
• 29 percent – Percentage of Oklahoma’s K-12 children who are on their own after school, 2009

Highway 51 Bridge between Wagoner and Coweta. Photo by flickr user doug_wertman used under a Creative Commons License.

Last week, Gov. Fallin announced a plan to fix the state’s decaying bridges by 2019. The proposal involves putting more money in the ROADS fund, which receives a portion of income tax revenues that would otherwise go to the state’s General Revenue Fund.

OK Policy released a statement on the Governor’s plan that was mentioned by both The Oklahoman and The Tulsa World:

We welcome Governor Fallin’s focus on fixing Oklahoma’s crumbling bridges. However, we must note that her proposal would be paid for entirely by diverting more income tax revenues from an already cash-strapped state budget. At the same time, Governor Fallin and other state leaders are promoting further cuts or outright abolition of the income tax. This should remind us that the income tax remains vital for funding Oklahoma’s needs and that we cannot meet our obligations to pay our bills while undermining our revenue base.

The Oklahoman included a response from the Governor’s spokesperson that the effort to fix bad bridges “does not reflect a lack of commitment to other areas of government.” Fallin’s office told The Oklahoman, “much of the additional transportation funding would come from growth revenue, and Oklahoma has enjoyed nice growth in revenue this fiscal year.” Read the rest of this entry »

Many state political and business leaders are clamoring to do away with Oklahoma’s personal income tax, the state’s single largest revenue source, while acknowledging the need to maintain sufficient tax revenue to fund basic services. One influential participant in the tax debate, House Revenue and Taxation Committee chairman David Dank, has made clear that he would support raising the state sales tax in order to eliminate the income tax.  Rep. Dank was quoted in February saying:

My personal preference would be to eliminate the state personal income tax entirely and replace it with consumption taxes on items other than groceries and prescription drugs, where everyone pays a fair share based on what they buy. The more money people have, the more they spend.

In Rep. Dank’s view, eliminating the income tax will draw  businesses and investors who will otherwise choose a state without an income tax, such as Texas. However, if the point of tax reform is to boost Oklahoma’s economy, our leaders should be wary of raising the state sales tax. Scrapping the income tax in favor of higher sales taxes would do many things, but none will be good for our economy.  Here are just a few ways that a higher sales tax will hurt our state: Read the rest of this entry »

Peter Fisher is research director for the Iowa Policy Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded in 2001 to produce research and analysis to engage Iowans in state policy decisions. This post first appeared on their Policy Points blog and is reprinted with their permission.

Let’s get one thing straight. Everyone pays taxes.

Even the lowest-income one-fifth of Americans pay about 16 percent of their income in taxes; they pay gas taxes if they drive, part of their rent goes to pay property taxes, they pay sales taxes when they go to the store, some pay state income taxes. There is no such thing as a class of people who pay no taxes.

Some would like to focus the debate just on the federal income tax and have succeeded in creating the impression that there is a large, permanent class of people who never pay federal income taxes. But they ignore the fact that most of those paying no income taxes this year will pay plenty of taxes later in life, or already paid a substantial share. They may be paying no taxes this year because they are young, starting out in a low-paying job, have young kids, and therefore need every penny they earn to pay for child care and to get by until they move up the career ladder. Read the rest of this entry »