“Tax the rich” sounds easy until lawmakers define “rich” broadly enough to hit the small business owner, farmer, physician, contractor, manufacturer, and family-owned shop trying to stay open in Kansas.
That is the danger. Soak-the-rich politics is sold as a tax on billionaires. In practice, it becomes a tax on everyday people who own assets (a farm, a local roofing business, etc.), employ workers, take risks, and often have wealth on paper but tight cash flow in real life.
Kansas should want no part of that.
The state already struggles to compete. The new 2026 Kansas Green Book shows Kansas remains too expensive, too fragmented, and too economically average to keep up with faster-growing states. Kansas collects about $6,597 per resident in state and local taxes and spends about $5,584 per resident, which is not the profile of a lean, low-tax growth state. It is the profile of a state asking too much from taxpayers while delivering too little growth.
The results are showing up in migration data. Kansas lost $361 million in adjusted gross income from domestic migration in 2023, and nearly $8 billion over the last 30 years. People are voting with their feet. Milton Friedman was right: if you want to know what people prefer, watch what they do when they are free to choose.
The worst response would be to double down on class-warfare tax policy.
Kansas has many people who look “rich” to politicians but are really asset-heavy and cash-constrained. Sorry for the economist-speak. This is someone who owns a profitable small business with inventory, land, equipment, or other assets that have real value but little in the way of Scrooge McDuck hoards of cash lying around.
Farmers may own land and equipment worth a lot on paper while facing low commodity prices, drought, high input costs, debt service, and uncertain yields. Kansas had 55,734 farms in 2022, down 5% from 2017 and 13.5% from 2002. These are not people sitting on piles of idle cash. They are working families with capital tied up in land, machinery, livestock, seed, fertilizer, and fuel.
Small businesses face the same reality. The SBA’s Kansas profile shows small businesses are central to job creation and business formation across the state. Many are pass-through firms where business income shows up on individual tax returns. Raise top individual rates, and lawmakers are often taxing the very businesses they claim to support.
That is why Kansas should avoid the path of states flirting with wealth taxes, millionaire surtaxes, exit-style taxes, and higher top rates. Those ideas may poll well in the short run, but they send a clear signal to entrepreneurs and investors: build somewhere else.
Kansas cannot afford that message.
The right approach is the opposite. Kansas should flatten and lower tax rates, broaden the base where appropriate, control spending, and use surplus dollars for permanent tax relief. The Legislature made progress with SB 269, which ties future income and privilege tax reductions to revenue performance and budget stabilization. That is better than letting government pocket every extra dollar forever.
But triggers alone are not enough. Tax relief must be paired with spending restraint. As I have argued in my work on responsible budgeting, Kansas should limit spending growth to no more than population growth plus inflation. Better yet, given past overspending, the state should aim lower until the budget is right-sized.
The issue is not whether “the rich” should pay. The issue is whether Kansas wants more employers, more farms, more startups, more investment, and more families choosing to stay.
Envy is not an economic development strategy. Punishing success does not create prosperity. If Kansas wants to grow, it should stop asking how much more it can take from productive people and start asking how much more freedom it can give them to build.
Kansas does not need soak-the-rich politics. It needs lower taxes, less spending, and a stronger commitment to letting people prosper.
