More Bad News for Backers of Kansas Tax Cuts

The latest projections from Kansas’ nonpartisan Legislative Research Department bring more bad news for those who hoped Kansas’ massive tax cuts would generate an economic surge.

The department predicts that personal incomes will grow more slowly in Kansas than in the nation as a whole this year and will continue to lag behind the national rate in 2015, 2016, and 2017, by wide margins (see graph).

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This isn’t what tax cut proponents predicted.  Governor Sam Brownback said they would be “a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy.”  The Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore, who helped design them, said the economic benefits would be “near immediate and permanent.”

Faced with the state’s unimpressive economic performance since the tax cuts took effect, proponents now claim they just need a little more time to work.  But the new forecast, combined with last week’s announcement that Kansas’ budget has fallen much further into the red than previously acknowledged (because of the tax cuts), casts further doubt on those claims.

This shouldn’t be a surprise.  History suggests that deep cuts in personal income taxes are a poor strategy for economic growth, and the serious academic literature typically finds little relationship between a state’s tax levels and its economic performance.  So there’s no reason to think that the tax cuts will cause Kansas’ economy to boom in the future.