Missouri Republicans are pressing to eliminate the state income tax, with lawmakers weighing a constitutional amendment that would likely be paired with a sales tax expansion. Voters would decide the question in August or November, putting the state on a path that could remake how it raises money and who pays most of it.
The proposal comes as Republicans in Georgia, South Carolina and West Virginia have recently approved bills to reduce state income taxes, and as Americans for Prosperity keeps pushing lawmakers around the country toward the same goal. Missouri, though, would go further than those states if voters approve the amendment.
The push is drawing on a long-running conservative argument: cut taxes on income, and businesses and jobs will follow. Carl Davis said the claim is that high-income people will grow businesses or create jobs, and the benefits will trickle back down to everyone else. But he said that logic has been tested many times before. “The reality is, this has been done at the national level and in many states, repeatedly, and it doesn’t work that way,” he said.
That warning lands in Missouri with unusual force because the state is being watched as the first in more than a century where a legislature is asking voters whether to eliminate the tax altogether. The campaign also has the imprint of Rex Sinquefield, who backed a group that pushed for Kansas’s income tax cut in 2012 and later donated millions to Republican Mike Kehoe’s successful 2024 run for governor. Kehoe has said phasing out the income tax would make Missouri more competitive, attract jobs and investment, and let workers keep more of what they earn from the start.
For some Missourians, the argument is personal rather than ideological. Dennis Ganahl said his 34-year-old son, who has four children, told him he was considering moving to Florida or Tennessee because those states did not have an income tax. Ganahl said he answered with a promise to keep him home. “I said, well, hell, stay in Missouri. I’ll get you zero income tax,” he said.
For others, the risk is immediate and concrete. Hannah Rejali, who lives in Kansas City and co-owns a marketing agency, said removing the income tax would be “pretty devastating from a public education standpoint.” Kansas is the cautionary tale hanging over the debate: after Governor Sam Brownback cut the state income tax, Kansas was left with a $900m budget shortfall, and in 2015 at least eight school districts ended their academic year early. Missouri’s proposal is likely to be sold as a growth plan, but it carries the same trade-off that followed Kansas around for years.
That is why the sales tax expansion matters. Supporters say residents would keep more of what they earn, while the state shifts more of its burden to spending. Critics say that would hit lower- and middle-income families harder and put public education funding at risk. And while backers often point to Florida and Texas — two of the nine US states without an income tax — Missouri is not starting from the same place. Its voters would be asked to make a choice that looks simple on the ballot and complicated everywhere else: whether a promise of growth is worth the cost of replacing one tax with another.
