With the 2017 Kansas Legislature careening toward a close, the majority of legislators in both chambers are doubling down on efforts to gouge citizens and leave generations of students behind so that those who profit from excessive and inefficient government can prosper. For those who might think that statement hyperbolical, consider the evidence: As shown separately by the Kansas Truth … Read More
Pass-Through Exemption Helped Add 18,000 jobs in 2015
The pass-through exemption for LLCs, Sub-S corps, partnerships and proprietors helped add over 18,000 new jobs in 2015 while all other private employers had small declines. New U.S. Census data shows employment at pass-through entities increased by almost 4 percent while the other major category – C-corps – declined by a half percent. Kansas was far behind the national average … Read More
PEAK subsidy costs Kansas $48.5 million annually
Many Democrats and Republicans in the Kansas Legislature are pushing for a very large personal income tax increase as the primary method of balancing the budget over the next two years, but they’ve shown little interest in stopping most of the special tax breaks they give to select businesses and government retirees. The PEAK subsidy (Promoting Employment Across Kansas) is … Read More
States that Spend Less, Tax Less…and Grow More
The correlation is as strong today as when published in the Wall Street Journal back in 2012: states that spend less, tax less…and grow more. Data collected from various government agencies and compiled in KPI’s 2017 Green Book show the states that tax income spent 42 percent more per-resident in 2015 than the states without an income tax. Alternatively, the ten … Read More
Fake news in Kansas promotes political agenda
An editorial in the Wichita Eagle reminded me that it’s been awhile since I wrote about fake news in Kansas, and there’s a lot. The Eagle editorial bemoaned a loss of 400 jobs in February but failed to disclose that private sector employment set a new record! The Bureau of Labor Statistics data comparing February 2016 to February 2017 shows Kansas … Read More
Kansas Private Sector Jobs Grew in 2016
New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show 9,100 private sector jobs were added in Kansas last year.[i] Preliminary reports showed Kansas with small job losses last year but BLS updates prior years’ data each March, and now shows Kansas with a small gain. While growth was positive, the annual growth rate of 0.8% was suppressed by ongoing economic … Read More
2017 Greenbook
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis saw states as “laboratories of democracy” conducting “experiments” in public policy. Today, more than eight decades after Brandeis coined the phrase, state experimentation with tax policy makes it abundantly clear that tax policy has a direct impact on economic growth. As shown on page 27 for the 2017 Greenbook, each of the eleven states … Read More
Kansas budget can be balanced without tax hikes
Yes, that’s right, the Kansas budget can be balanced without a tax increase. But first, here’s some background to put the situation in perspective. When the Legislature raised the sales tax rate in 2015 as part of the largest tax hike in Kansas history, many legislators, special interests and media expressed outrage at the impact on the poor and the … Read More
New business filings sets another record in Kansas
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach reports new business filings set another record in 2016. There were 18,147 new domestic business filings last year and the total number of entities in existence also set another record at 187,305. The number of entities in existence does not include proprietorships. It’s noteworthy that both the number of new filings and total entities … Read More
Kansas job rank improves after tax reform
The first three years after reducing income taxes saw the Kansas job rank improve nicely according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Over the fourteen years leading up to 2012, private sector jobs grew by 6.3 percent and that growth rate ranked #41 among the states. But in the three years since income taxes were reduced Kansas’ growth … Read More