TOPEKA, Kan. — A Republican plan to cut taxes in Kansas died Tuesday in the Republican Party-controlled Legislature when enough members concluded it would overly favor wealthy taxpayers and upheld the Democratic governor’s veto.
The vote in the state House was 81-42, leaving Republican leaders three votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto last month. The plan would have provided nearly $1.6 billion in income, sales and property tax cuts over the next three years.
Republican leaders have been unable to overcome Kelly’s opposition to their plan to move Kansas to a uniform rate or a “flat” personal income tax from the current three-tier system. The top rate is now 5.7%, and the Republican plan would have brought the uniform rate to 5.25%.
The same impasse last year prevented major tax cuts when Kelly and Republican leaders said they wanted them. Excess revenues are expected to reach $4.5 billion by the end of June, or 17% of the current $25 billion state budget. Meanwhile, a dozen other states cut taxes last year, according to the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation.
“We’ll figure it out,” the House of Representatives’ top Democrat, Rep. Vic Miller of Topeka, told his colleagues, referring to a Beatles song. “We still have plenty of time to reach a compromise.”
Lawmakers don’t wrap up the year’s business until early May.
After Tuesday’s vote, Kelly called on them to consider her plan without a flat income tax, which would save $1 billion over the next three years. But it is not clear that there is room for compromise. GOP leaders have insisted that any plan must include a flat rate, and Kelly has said she won’t accept that.
Kelly warned that the Republican plan would create budget deficits within five years, while the bulk of income tax cuts, in terms of overall dollars, would go to top earners. Republicans rejected her projections, saying their plan helped everyone.
After Tuesday’s vote, top Republicans in the House of Representatives released a statement accusing Kelly and her allies of “gamesmanship” and blaming them for the lack of tax relief so far.
“The Democrats’ games are being played at the expense of real people who need real help now,” the House Speaker pro tem and majority leader said in a joint statement.
But Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers and could have overridden Kelly’s vetoes if the Republican Party were fully unified. Five Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against it on Tuesday.
One of them, Republican Rep. Trevor Jacobs of southeastern Kansas, one of the most conservative members of the House of Representatives, said the plan would shift most of the state’s income tax burden to the working class, an argument that others Republicans dispute.
“Real work needs to be done to help all Kansans, not just a select few,” he told his colleagues.
Even if the House of Representatives had voted to override Kelly’s veto, Republican leaders would have faced a difficult vote in the Senate. The state constitution would have made the Senate wait until March 22 to vote, which would significantly narrow the room to consider another tax plan if the effort to override the plan failed there.
“While I am neutral on the flat tax, I cannot continue on this path to failure,” said Republican Rep. Randy Garber, a conservative from northeastern Kansas, explaining his no vote.
Republican leaders had tried to seduce Kelly by including provisions she proposed or endorsed. The GOP plan would have eliminated the 2% sales tax on groceries on April 1, lowered property taxes for homeowners and exempted all retirees’ Social Security benefits from income taxes.
The GOP plan would also have exempted the first $20,300 of a married couple’s income from state taxes, more if they have children, with the amounts rising with inflation after 2025.
Republicans initially said another 310,000 poor and working-class Kansas voters would no longer have to pay personal income taxes and moved to wearing green buttons that read “310,000.” But that figure was a misinterpretation of state data, and the actual number is about 110,000. .
Still, Republicans said their plan helped the state’s poorest residents. House Taxation Committee Adam Smith, a Republican from western Kansas, unsuccessfully urged his colleagues to overlook any shortcomings by also citing a legendary rock band, the Rolling Stones.
“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might just find out you get what you need,” he said. “Kansans need tax relief.”