STATEMENT: Governor Fallin's plan to end income tax would bust huge hole in the state budget

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 https://okpolicy.org/tax-reform-information.