Missouri lawmakers are pushing a bold proposal to completely eliminate the state’s income tax, potentially making it the tenth state in the nation to do so. The plan, spearheaded by Republican leadership in Jefferson City, would phase out individual income taxes over five years while seeking alternative revenue sources to maintain essential state services.
“I’m in the in between,” says School of the Osage High School Government teacher Mr. Wersching, “I’ll have to do more research on how it would affect me overall.”
When asked to dive deeper into what he thinks would happen if Missouri did eliminate income tax, Wersching stated that, “while it would look like there would be more money in our paycheck, the government has to get that money from somewhere else, almost making it seem like we didn’t make a bigger paycheck at all.” He even goes as far as to say that the government might make a whole new tax as well.
When looking at other states with no income tax, such as Florida, we can see that not having income tax does in fact raise other taxes, specifically sales tax. This is one of the reasons Florida’s gas prices are so high.
So now we extend the question to you: are you with or against eliminating income tax?