Tax & Spending

Record-setting levels of Freedom in Kansas Legislature 0
- Education, Tax & Spending
- July 29, 2019
The results of our 2019 Kansas Freedom Index show freedom in Kansas is on the march…at least in the Kansas Legislature. The 2019 Kansas Freedom Index set records for high scores with 52 legislators scoring at least 86%. That’s good news. The results also confirmed what we’ve known for years – party identification has very
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Three Signs of Kansas Government Growth 0
- Tax & Spending
- July 11, 2019
How much government is too much for Kansas? Three straight years of income tax increases are sending the state budget to another historical high. However, three signs suggest that bigger is not always better. Three signs; jobs, personal income, and purchases, that link government growth to a stagnant Kansas economy. The legislature approved, and the
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Over 2,500 KPERS ‘millionaires’ and $1.7 billion in pension payments published 0
- Tax & Spending
- July 5, 2019
An Open Records request fulfilled by the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System (KPERS) shows record-setting payouts in 2018 of $1.7 billion. The number of KPERS ‘millionaires’ also set a new record, with 2,522 government retirees expected to receive more than $1 million in pension benefits over the first 20 years of retirement; that’s 188 more
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Local Government Pushes Property Tax to Record Levels 0
- Tax & Spending
- July 2, 2019
Property tax assessed by Kansas counties has grown 164% over the past 21 years, according to the Kansas Department of Revenue. Over the same time frame, inflation is 49.5%, and population growth is 11%. This growth means Kansans are paying roughly $593 million more in taxes than the county’s prices or population would dictate. Graphs
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“Hope” Leads to Work & Opportunity 0
- Tax & Spending
- June 24, 2019
Taxpayer-funded programs that combat poverty should operate in ways that create a pathway to economic independence. As such, welfare reforms, like the Hope Act and other efforts, truly benefitted low-income Kansans by encouraging work and lowering poverty rates. Increasing handouts, in contrast, trapped more Kansans into government dependency, stifling their potential success and self-reliance. Kansas
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Record State Budgets From Off-Target Economic Predictions 0
- Tax & Spending
- June 13, 2019
When it comes to making predictions, they say that the only good thing about economic forecasters is that they make the TV weathermen look good. Kansas’s economic and tax revenue forecasters, known as the Consensus Revenue Estimating Group or CRE are no different, and they have a history of missing their estimates. As a result,
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