Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signs income-tax cuts into law
Kansas is headed for a reckoning. On Tuesday, Gov. Sam Brownback signed a bill into law cutting income tax that would decrease the individual tax rate for those making more than $30,000 per year from 6.45 percent to 4.9 percent. Under the new tax-cut plan, married couples will pay 3 percent on the first $30,000 they earned and 4.9 percent on income above that. Single head-of-household filers’ standard deduction will rise from $4,500 to $9,000 (the standard deduction for married couples increases from $6,000 to $9,000). The law also eliminates income taxes on non-wage income for limited liability companies, subchapter S corporations, and sole proprietorships.
The law doesn’t include what Brownback termed a series of “pay fors.” He had proposed sales-tax increases, elimination of the exemption on mortgage interest and the earned-income credit. Those “pay fors” were left on the floor of the Kansas Legislature. And now, according to the Kansas Legislative Research Department, Kansas will have an $800 million reduction in the revenue it collects in 2014. To put that in perspective, that’s 12.8 percent of projected revenues.
