Flat tax would have catastrophic consequences for Kansans. We’ve already seen it happen.

Even with the damage of Sam Brownback’s failed tax “experiment” visible in the rear-view mirror, the Kansas Chamber and others have begun pushing for a “flat” (one-rate) income tax, significantly benefiting wealthy individuals and large multinational corporations at the expense of working-class Kansans.

Perhaps they think people have forgotten that the 2012 Brownback tax experiment flattened individual income taxes from three brackets to two while simultaneously exempting all non-wage business income. The results were catastrophic.

Wealth did not trickle down; the economy was not stimulated; jobs were not created; and a rising tide did not lift all boats — contrary to the promises of hired-gun outsiders like Arthur Laffer, special interest groups funded by billionaire plutocrats and lobbyists representing the biggest corporations.

But now, many of those same forces have reassembled to collapse the brackets into a single flat rate that would force working-class Kansans and small businesses to pay at the same rate as the wealthiest among us.

Making the state income tax more regressive by shifting the burden toward those least able to pay is but one problem. The plan also will reduce revenue elasticity, permanently slowing the growth of receipts and therefore effectively accelerating the state’s next budget crisis.

Kansans will recall what happened in the Brownback era: multiple back-filling and regressive sales tax increases; painful budget cuts to K-12 schools, higher education, social services and economic development; and pennywise and pound-foolish budget gimmicks that robbed money from the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System and the Kansas Department of Transportation.

Going down this dark road again would be dangerous for Kansas in 2023.

Simultaneous with the flat tax rollout, some policymakers suggest that Kansans again be denied a full and immediate repeal of the food sales tax, evidently because of the cost. These are the same legislators who last year hijacked Gov. Laura Kelly’s plan to “axe the food tax” as of July 1, 2022. Instead, they delayed the tax cut until Jan. 1, 2023 — conveniently until after the 2022 election — and delayed the full repeal until 2025.

The governor, of course, has now once again urged legislators to move as quickly as possible to do what should’ve been done last year to “axe the food tax” as of April 1.

Why not? This tax cut benefits everyone. It is a family friendly tax cut that politicians in both parties literally have been talking about since the state sales tax was first enacted in 1937.

But the Republican House Taxation Committee chairman has said that legislators should proceed cautiously because cutting the food tax to zero represented a “math problem” and needed to be “something we can sustain.” His comment doesn’t make sense. Repeal of the food tax will be off the books as of 2025 and will not be an ongoing drain on the state general fund.

What would be an ongoing drain on the general fund is the flat tax proposal as it was introduced (House Bill 2061), notwithstanding earlier comments by the Republican Senate president that a flat tax could in fact be implemented in a revenue-neutral fashion.

But if supporters of HB2061 intended it to be revenue neutral, they missed the mark. Badly.

The fiscal note indicates the “flat” tax grab-bag of cuts for wealthy individuals, corporations and banks would drop receipts by an initial $428 million in fiscal year 2024; and by a staggering $1.452 billion when fully annualized in fiscal year 2025. Can that be sustained?

On the issue of equity, an analysis from the Kansas Department of Revenue shows that while individuals with Kansas adjusted gross income (KAGI) from zero to $25,000 would receive an average tax cut of $143 (less than the benefit many would get from cutting the food tax); individuals with KAGI of $250,000 and above would receive an average tax cut of $4,734.

A similar breakdown from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy indicates the top 1% of filers would see an average cut of $11,510, whereas the bottom 20% would receive a cut of about $192. The Governor’s Council on Tax Reform, where we both served, also developed hypothetical taxpayer models we suspect will be quite useful in comparing and contrasting the full food tax cut with any number of income tax or other proposals.

What Kansas taxpayers do not need is a warmed-over Brownback 2.0 experiment that is a huge giveaway to wealthy individuals and large corporations leading us down the same disastrous path taken a decade ago.

Kelly’s successful stewardship in steering the state out of that mess is one important reason she was reelected in November. Policymakers in 2023 would be wise to prevent big-monied powerful special interests from turning hardworking Kansas families into experimental lab rats once again.

Former Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley was first elected to the Legislature in 1976 and served until 2021, the longest-serving member in state history. He was a member of Gov. Laura Kelly’s Council on Tax Reform. Chris Courtwright, also a member of the Council on Tax Reform, retired in 2020 after 34 years as the Kansas Legislature’s principal economist and member of the Consensus Revenue Estimating Group. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.