Don't Shift Taxes From the Wealthy onto Working Families

I urge you to strongly oppose and vote "No" on HJR 173/174 (Davidson and Patterson). This amendment is a thinly veiled scheme to fundamentally shift Missouri’s tax burden from the wealthy to working families, under the misleading banner of “eliminating the income tax.” The proposal would constitutionally prohibit a state individual income tax after 2031, contingent on revenue triggers. This is not tax relief, it is a restructuring. The lost revenue is explicitly intended to be replaced by expanding sales and use taxes to tax services and transactions that have never been taxed before. Sales taxes are deeply regressive, consuming a far greater share of income from low and middle-income families than from the wealthy. This is a direct attack on economic justice. Additionally, while the amendment mandates local adjustments to property or earnings taxes to offset new sales tax revenue, it explicitly prohibits any reduction in funding to public schools. This creates a fiscal straitjacket for local governments, likely forcing cuts to other essential services like libraries and infrastructure that vulnerable communities rely on. The amendment also includes a troubling exemption, allowing this massive tax shift to bypass normal constitutional requirements for voter approval of tax increases (Article X, Sections 18 & 18(e)). This is undemocratic and opens the door to further abuse of this bypass in the future. This is not reform. It is a destructive gambit that protects capital gains and high incomes while financing government on the backs of those who can least afford it through a broader, more regressive consumption tax. I urge you to reject it.