Cities, counties, school districts, and many other local taxing districts rely on property taxes to fund their operations. For a full review of the details of property assessment and taxation in Missouri, please read Show-Me Institute Policy Study Number 28, “Homes, Taxes and Choices: A Review of Real Estate Assessment and Property Taxation in Missouri.” In Missouri, the local assessor assigns a value to taxable property every two years. Local governments then use those values to set their property tax rates. The rate and value are combined to calculate the annual property tax bill sent out each year to homeowners and other types of property owners. Those property taxes are the primary source of funding for local government authorities in Missouri.

House Joint Resolution 36 (2009), the “Fair Tax” bill, called for replacing personal and corporate income taxes with a broad, revenue neutral 5.11-percent sales tax. The legislation also called for a tax rebate to be disbursed on the first day of each month to qualified families in the state. In our view, Missouri’s economy would grow faster if HJR 36 were enacted. However, through a combination of misinformation, miscalculation, and the promotion of myths, HJR 36 was unfairly maligned.

Missouri and Tennessee are border states that resemble each other in many ways. Despite the states’ similarities, Missouri has historically been the more populous and prosperous of the two, owing in part to its size advantage and in part to historical factors. Throughout the 1900s, however, Tennessee’s population and economy have gradually caught up to Missouri's; its population is now about 5 percent larger than its neighbor to the northwest, it has a higher per-capita GDP, and its per-capita GDP now trails Missouri's by only a few percentage points. In order to evaluate why Tennessee’s economy has grown at a faster rate than Missouri’s, it is important to consider the impact of one of the most significant and enduring differences between the two states: macroeconomic tax policy.