Progressive tax ideas for Arkansas
Today the Center for a Better South released a new book, "Doing Better: Progressive Tax Reform for the American South," which suggests eleven ways Southern lawmakers can improve their state tax systems. It also provides individually-tailored scorecards for every Southern state.
See the Arkansas scorecard here. It says we have done a decent job of modernizing our sales taxes, but we could use some improvement in the other ten categories.
Comments
I worked on the Murphy Commission and almost all of the this report's recommendations were addressed in 1998. The Gov. and Leg (other than Mike Beebe and Tom Courtway) ignored most of it. For instance, a Murphy Report was the first to propose indexing the income tax brackets for inflation. Some mild relief followed but not much. The top bracket 7%, should begin about $85000 (1998 numbers).
There are many valuable recommendations to save money and deliver better services at the URL posted.
Posted by: Murphy Commissioner | June 23, 2006 02:05 PM
I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that our top state tax bracket was 7% on $29,200. Who knew I was so "big time"?
Posted by: hugh mann | June 23, 2006 07:23 PM
All great ideas, but will anyone provide leadership needed to get it done?
Cleary we can't expect any leadership from the Gov. Any legislators willing to step up to the plate?
Posted by: Anonymous | June 23, 2006 08:35 PM
One thing this does not address is our local sales taxes. We have too wide of a range of local sales tax rates. We need to set a limit on local sales tax rates and then provide more state revnue sharing with those counties and cities with a low tax base.
Instead of lowering the overall sales tax rate, we should provide rebates based on income. This way we do not lose sales tax revenues from out-of-state tourists.
Posted by: the bold and the blue | June 23, 2006 08:39 PM