This report will go straight to the trash should any of the ruling Republicans see it, but for the record from the Brookings Institute — state income tax cuts are of little value in spurring economic growth. Where they’ve been tried and failed, the unavoidable need to raise revenue has produced — not a return to a progressive income tax — but regressive taxes that hit poor people hardest.
The states have no good reasons to believe that tax cuts will bring the desired manna. Yet they continue to erode their tax bases in the name of business growth during an era in which few states can afford to cut critical services ranging from education to infrastructure repair. Some ideas live on and on, no matter how much evidence accumulates against them. States that follow them do so at their own peril.