‘Reckless’ or ‘responsible': Missouri’s GOP tax plan sparks fierce debate

By Siobhan Harms, Missouri News Network 

JEFFERSON CITY — Missouri lawmakers are engaged in a high-stakes tax debate, with Republicans proposing income tax cuts reminiscent of Kansas’ failed experiment.
“Five years later, they realized they’d made a huge mistake,” state Rep. Kemp Strickler, D-Lee’s Summit, said.
In 2012, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signed a bill that eliminated taxes on business income for thousands of businesses and cut individual income tax rates. That year, in an opinion piece for The Wichita Eagle, Brownback wrote, “our new pro-growth tax policy will be like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy.”
Instead, the legislation, which became known as the “Kansas experiment,” was widely viewed as a disaster. While the goal was to stimulate economic output and job creation, the experiment failed — Kansas underperformed most neighboring states and the nation in economic output and job creation after the cuts.
Five years after the Kansas experiment began, the state faced an economic crisis. To address pitfalls in state revenue, the state deferred payments to pension funds and transferred money out of the State Highway Fund and Children’s Initiative Fund.
By June 2017, a coalition of Democrats and Republicans managed to push a bill restoring income tax through the state legislature, despite a veto from Brownback.
Both Democrats and Republicans in Missouri agree that the Kansas experiment serves as a warning. However, while Democrats promote the Kansas experiment as an example of when conservative tax policies go awry, Missouri’s Republican lawmakers say it serves as a blueprint for how they can do the same thing, but with adjustments to avoid the economic fallout.
Senate Joint Resolution 31 and House Joint Resolution 1 would ask voters to amend the Missouri Constitution to cap state spending and gradually reduce both individual and corporate income taxes.
According to data provided by Missouri’s Office of Administration, in fiscal year 2026, individual income taxes and corporate taxes are projected to make up 65.2% of state revenue. In order to cut taxes sustainably, lawmakers have to figure out how this revenue would be replaced.
State Rep. Bishop Davidson, R-Republic, who sponsored HJR 1, said lawmakers are exploring three different ways to cut while keeping the budget balanced: buying down the tax using natural economic growth, altering current sales tax models and cutting inefficiencies in the state budget. He said it’s likely these methods will need to be utilized in combination, but the details are not immediately clear.
“We don’t hear how we’re going to fund our schools, our public safety, our blind pension fund, all of these kinds of things that are impacted by that,” Strickler said in response. “So we’re very, very concerned.”

There are over 60 sales tax exemptions and exclusions in Missouri, according to data provided by the Missouri Department of Revenue. Davidson said eliminating these exemptions in entirety is an option to make reducing income tax sustainable. Democrats say this will only serve to hurt working-class Missourians.
“It certainly puts more of the burden on the low-income people, we know that,” Strickler said. “‘Can it work?’ I don’t know, but I know it will hurt a lot of people along the way.”
State Rep. Kent Haden, R-Mexico, who supports the tax cut efforts, agrees that cuts will be painful. He said he is encouraging his constituents to identify what state programs they’re willing to lose as a result of the cuts.
“I get lots of emails, ‘We want to cut income tax, or we want to cut property taxes,’” Haden said. “I send an email back and say, ‘Okay, tell me what you want to cut, what service you’re willing to cut.’”
“I’m not getting very many answers out of them, but just, ‘cut the waste out,’” he said. “Well, there’s waste to be cut, but these specific programs are probably going to be somebody’s favorite program, somebody’s pet project or somebody’s honey pot.”
These cuts would come as federal American Rescue Plan Act funding dwindles and as the federal government’s Department of Government Efficiency cuts grants that support state programs.
State Rep. David Tyson Smith, D-Columbia, said adding tax cuts to this would be “reckless.”
“If they think it’s reckless, they probably haven’t read the bill,” Davidson said. “We’re not purporting to just cut these taxes writ large, we’re looking at a way to responsibly phase out or responsibly replace Missouri income tax revenue.”
As the bill moves through the legislative process, Democrats are asking for increasing clarity as to how these cuts will be accomplished responsibly.
In the House, Davidson has pulled HJR 1 into committee, in what he says is an attempt to build confidence and bring additional stakeholders to the table. The Senate’s version of the resolution is also in committee.
“We’re looking at doing this as quickly as possible, but that doesn’t come at the expense of doing it as responsibly as possible as well,” Davidson said.