The Kansas City Royals and Kansas City Chiefs released a joint statement Friday to stay in Jackson County, pending voters’ approval of a sales tax extension.

The statement comes amid the Royals’ plans to build a new $2 billion ballpark district as they look at locations in both Jackson County and Clay County.

The teams said Friday they are committed to staying in Jackson County — and provid[ing] over $200 million in economic benefits — if voters approve a 40-year extension of the 3/8th-cent sales tax in April.

The sales tax extension will help the Chiefs renovate Arrowhead Stadium at the Truman Sports Complex and assist with the Royals’ new stadium in downtown Kansas City.

It wasn’t news that the Chiefs planned to stay put. Driven in part by the Royals’ public relations disaster, the Chiefs had confirmed months ago they indeed intend to remain at Arrowhead (despite flirting with Kansas two years ago), and it was clear the football team was only waiting on the baseball team to make its decision. The Chiefs’ involvement at this juncture also puts a more popular brand in front. Frankly, the baseball team is probably better off with Chiefs superstar and Royals co-owner Patrick Mahomes leading the final charge to the ballot box rather than majority owner John Sherman, who’s helmed the Royals’ push to this point. I’m sure Sherman would agree.

Will taxpayers accept this rose? It won’t come for free. Now that the Royals have decided on Jackson County as their first choice, it will now (likely) be up to voters to decide in April whether to continue subsidizing not one, but two sports teams into 2071—that is, nearly to the 22nd century. Where will that baseball stadium be? Unlikely at its current site, where the taxpayer-financed and recently upgraded Kauffman Stadium seems destined for the wrecking ball. At least two new Jackson County sites are in contention, and a final site announcement may be weeks or months away, if it comes before the vote at all. In the meantime, we wait.

In the interest of balance, I will say that the Royals’ behavior—though misguided and wrongheaded—is consistent with the behavior of countless other private businesses, in and outside the professional sports industry, when it comes to tax incentives and public financial support. The Royals want something for free, regardless of whether they’re owed it. That’s their prerogative, and it’s up to taxpayers to finally say, “No, our tax dollars should go to legitimate public services and not to a private entertainment operation.”

But odds are that Jackson County taxpayers won’t say no—they’ll likely approve the tax extension for the Royals’ (and Chiefs’) benefit, even as other notable local challenges, like murder, remain unaddressed. Taxpayers can do better. I hope they do.

The post Royals Officially Probably Staying in Jackson County appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But even the best-laid plans can go awry, so how optimistic are legislators that items important to taxpayers will get across the finish line this year? As an article in the Missouri Independent emphasizes, it depends on who you ask:

“I mean, I think we’ll get things done,” said Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican. “Will we get everything done that we want to do? No, we never do. But I’m an optimist.”

Democrats and Republicans share many of the same goals, O’Laughlin said, and progress can be made if people are willing to sit down and talk about how to reach those goals.

The Missouri House has generally been effective in advancing good legislation in the last few years, often only to be stifled in the Senate. The real question for whether 2024 will be “successful” hinges on how the Missouri Senate, now in an election year, handles its business. Will the majority party see itself often split, with leadership joining with the minority party to pass or stop legislation as it did in 2023? Will the majority party use Previous Question motions to scuttle filibusters from all quarters to pass its priorities? Will we see a mix of the two? Or will the chamber mostly be mired in dysfunction and nothing really gets done (again)?

How the factions in the Senate align will play an enormous role in what actually gets done in 2024. With a handful of exceptions, the last few years have been littered with missed opportunities, primarily because the Senate has alternated between watering down important measures or not passing them at all. So 2024 is a Yoda moment of sorts, especially for Missouri’s outgoing senators; lawmakers have entered “do or do not, there is no try” territory if they want to build a legacy before they leave the legislature for good. Giving lip service to good legislation isn’t going to cut it this time around.

What’s ultimately done (or not) remains to be seen, and we at the Show-Me Institute will keep you posted as the session progresses. But I hope that all Missouri legislators will set aside their squabbling and make decisions that keep the good- and limited-government promises made to their constituents. If they do, 2024 could be a banner year for the state, but if they don’t, well, this year will look a lot like last year. And that would be unfortunate.

The post As Legislature Returns, Whose Priorities Will Take Priority? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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The post The 2024 Session Begins appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Why stop at 4.5%? As the state’s general revenue grows, shouldn’t tax rates be adjusted accordingly so that the total size of government doesn’t also grow? By eliminating the limit of three reductions to the income tax rate from the law, Missouri can set forth a fiscally responsible glide path to eliminating the income tax entirely, using current law to facilitate this autopilot tax reform. Letting taxes drop as revenues rise is an appropriate and efficient way of achieving this end.

We have talked at length and for years about how destructive income taxes are to growth and why they should be phased out and ended in Missouri. Accelerating that stepdown is worthwhile, but not stopping that stepdown is just as important, given the current law. Policymakers should remove the floor and let the individual income tax rate continue to fall if government revenue keeps rising.

The post Why Don’t We Remove the Floor from Missouri’s Income Tax Triggers? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

To achieve this transparency objective seems simple. A new statement could be added to RSMo §105.145(2) that says, “the auditor may require the submission of supporting documents for such financial transactions, including but not limited to check registers or their electronic equivalent, and digital bookkeeping files.”   Such an addition wouldgive the state auditor the authority to require supporting documents for financial documents reported to the state by local governments. The auditor could then post the documents online, giving the public a complete and detailed picture of how their money is being spent.

With such a change to state law, the State Auditor would be better equipped to ensure that public funds are being used in a transparent and accountable manner. For its part the public would be able to see how money is spent rather than being forced to use the Sunshine Law to get such records—a process that, as staff at the Show-Me Institute has discovered over many years, is often made more difficult by officials apparently trying to prevent the dissemination of these records.

No more asking “pretty please” for transparency from local bureaucrats. The Auditor’s Office would be able to deliver this transparency if it had such explicit powers.

The post The Authority of the Missouri Auditor Should Be Expanded to Enhance Local Transparency appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But Missouri can do better, and that means updating state law to ensure that the objective of reciprocity—that is, the expansion of health care supply to patients by leveraging qualified individuals from other states—is in fact achieved.

Two areas, then, that require attention in Missouri are the six-month delay in reciprocity admission that’s permitted under RSMo §324.009(3) and the compact exception in RSMo §324.009(10) that allows licensing boards to step in front of reciprocity reforms by entering into preemptive compacts. Both the six-month delay and compact exception can be easily corrected by deleting those provisions.

These tweaks to Missouri law may seem obscure and small, but they are important, and they should be implemented as quickly as possible for the benefit both of the professionals affected and the consumers and patients that will benefit from increased access to those professionals.

The post Expanding Interstate License Reciprocity Can Improve Access to Health Care appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Yet research tends to show CON has the opposite effect of its original intention, leading to higher costs and reduced access to care for patients. This is not surprising, of course. As President Ronald Reagan once joked, often when the government comes “to help” is when the public should get concerned.

Missouri can stop “helping” in this counterproductive way by unwinding its CON law. By repealing its certificate of need law through removing sections 197.300-197.367 from the state’s statutes, Missouri could promote competition, reduce costs, and increase access to care for all Missourians.

To find out more about the CON issue in Missouri, read our 2019 paper on the subject, End Certificate of Need in Missouri.

The post Repeal Certificate of Need For the Health and Welfare of Missourians appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There are two key ways of doing this reporting. The first way is by embracing something along the lines of House Bill 2242 from 2019, which included mandatory municipal transparency language. The second way is by tweaking Missouri Revised Statutes §§37.1090 to 37.1098 by replacing the voluntary “may” language with mandatory “shall” statements.

Making local government transparency mandatory in Missouri would be an enormous leap forward in government accountability in the Show-Me State. Transparency can empower people, build trust in government, and ensure public resources are used in the best way possible.

The post Transparency in Municipal Government Should Be Mandatory appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Parents’ Bill of Rights focuses on five key areas: curriculum transparency, school choice, parental involvement, data privacy, and district accountability. High among those objectives is the establishment of an online portal where district curricula can be viewed by parents so that they are fully informed of the instruction happening in their schools. We discussed these issues at length before Missouri’s U.S. Civil Rights Commission Advisory Committee earlier this year.

The core of the problem, as we’ve revealed over the last few years, is that the current setup for finding out what’s going on in schools requires either a forthright district (or school) or a district that’s compliant with the letter and spirit of Missouri’s Sunshine Law. In essence, taxpayers have to ask about how their money is being spent – rather than simply receive or see it without having to beg for it. The potential result of the current law is straightforward, with districts playing games with responses or attempting to charge outrageous sums for the information.

Now it’s time for this important policy to become law. By empowering parents, improving educational outcomes, promoting school choice, enhancing transparency and accountability, and protecting student data privacy, the adoption of a Parents’ Bill of Rights could have an important impact on the state’s education system—and improve the relationship between parents and the schools they fund.

The post The Parents’ Bill of Rights: Its Time Has Come appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In an attempt to increase the supply of affordable housing in Kansas City, the Mayor and council have passed, with various amendments over time, requirements that developers seeking city tax incentives set aside some units for lower-income residents. There have been arguments over the exact details of the law, but overall the requirement is valid because it is, to a large extent, voluntary. Developers don’t have to seek tax subsidies. However, if they choose to seek them, they have to play by certain rules. So far, so good.

The latest proposal to support affordable housing in Kansas City, however, is the opposite of voluntary. The city council is considering a requirement called a “source of income” rule. This rule would prohibit landlords from refusing to rent to tenants who pay with housing vouchers or other types of government assistance. The most familiar of these programs is called Section 8. This proposal is a violation of the individual rights of landlords and a dangerous expansion of city government’s role in the economy and housing market. Beyond that, it is simply infuriating that local officials think they have the right to do this.

The Section 8 housing voucher program, along with the other programs run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), is a federal government program. It has always been voluntary for landlords to participate. That voluntary nature is one of the program’s strengths, and there is no shortage of landlords who choose to take part in it. The most recent estimate we know of stated there were around 695,000 landlords nationwide who participated as of 2016. Many of those are large, property-management businesses with numerous units.

There are many examples of government social programs in which participation is voluntary. Doctors are not forced to accept Medicaid payments, yet many do. Grocery stores are not required to accept food stamps, yet many, if not most, do. That is how the Section 8 housing voucher program has successfully worked for many years. Imposing a local mandate in Kansas City will force landlords either to join the program against their will, creatively find other reasons to deny high-risk renters, or sell their properties to larger landlords. Each of these results is bad.

Denying high-risk renters is made more difficult by other aspects of the bill, which take the proposal beyond tragedy to farce. The bill states landlords cannot reject applicants based on things like poor credit scores, past eviction history, or criminal record. It is essentially forcing landlords to rent to anyone who applies, no matter their financial state or criminal history. Are laws requiring school bus companies to hire drunk drivers and pre-schools to hire sex offenders coming next?

It is fair to question the presumption that something needs to be done about Kansas City’s supply of affordable housing in the first place. The Kansas City metropolitan area was ranked the 13th most affordable housing market in the country in one survey. Another very recent survey ranked Kansas City 27th out of the 100 largest metro areas in total affordability, where housing was an important part of the calculations. Among the many other worthy objections to this source-of-income rule is the fact that it’s a solution in search of a problem.

If Kansas City wants to do something that might actually help lower-income people find more affordable housing, it could rezone parts of the city, especially those near transit stops, to allow for more multi-family housing units. Increasing the supply of housing of all types is the best way to lower the cost of housing. Minneapolis dramatically reduced its zoning requirements in 2018 to allow more apartments and condominium developments. Since that time, median rental rates in Minneapolis have increased by just one percent—the lowest in the nation—due to increased housing supply. The law of supply and demand remains undefeated, no matter how much members of the Kansas City Council may prefer addressing this issue by ordering people around.

Landlords and developers can meet this demand for housing if they are allowed to—authoritarian mandates are not required. This council can let the free-market work for housing in Kansas City, as it has done very effectively for decades.

The post Kansas City’s “Source of Income” Housing Rule Is an Abuse of Government Power appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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Is it Johnny-come-lately political theater? Is it a principled beef against higher taxes on behalf of citizens? The court will decide!

Blue Springs will join one of its neighbors [Independence] and become the third city suing Jackson County over property tax assessments. . . .

“The mayor and City Council are authorizing legal action to ensure the residents of Blue Springs receive a fair and consistent process for the assessment of real property in compliance with state law,” the City Council said in a statement Thursday. . . .

Last month, Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick said his office’s whistleblower hotline has received complaints about significantly higher property assessments, not being able to get through the phone line, and software company Tyler Technology making decisions it might not be qualified to make.

The lawsuits by the cities are in addition to the class action lawsuit filed privately by residents on similar issues, asserting (in short) failures of notice and process by the county. For example, the Lee’s Summit suit asserts that the state’s requirement that a reassessment be the result of a physical inspection was not met for this year’s reassessment, and the Independence suit asserts that the county failed to meet a variety of deadlines, among other statutory violations.

Whether anything comes of this stack of lawsuits remains to be seen, but the fact remains that property tax reform should be a priority for legislators and county leaders in 2024, so that future reassessments will be predictable and reasonable for Missourians statewide. As for Kansas City, my colleague David Stokes would remind policymakers that the constitutional exemption that allows the Kansas City public school district to not roll its tax rate back as property assessments increase is a major issue that should be grappled with sooner, not later.

The post And Then There Were Three: Blue Springs Joins Jackson County Property Tax Lawsuit Party appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Phil Davis: [sighs] I don’t know what he’s up to, but he’s got that Rodgers and Hammerstein look again.

Betty Haynes: Is that bad?

Phil Davis: Not bad, but always expensive.

I’m afraid things are about to get more expensive with the Royals:

The Royals had previously announced a decision on a new Kansas City ballpark by the end of September. Now, as of Sept. 21, the team is looking to push off a decision as negotiations continue with both Jackson County and Clay County officials over the cost and funding of the projects. If the team goes downtown, the new ballpark would be located in the East Village near the downtown loop, on a 27-acre site bounded by 8th Street to the north, 12th Street to the south (where the main entrance would be located), Charlotte Street to the east to Cherry Street to the west; if the team does go with North Kansas City, an 18th Avenue and Fayette Street ballpark location would be part of the 90-acre site. The target date for both locations: 2028.

The fact that negotiations are continuing with both counties is concerning, precisely for the reason Quentin Lucas mentioned at the outset when Clay County’s bid was announced: the longer this bidding war goes on, the worse served local taxpayers are going to be. It’s hard to envision a circumstance where longer negotiations would decrease the amount of money shoveled over to the Kansas City Royals at the end of this process, so moving the decision date from late September to late October is a very unwelcome development.

Again, no public money should be going to a project like this, but if it is, it would be far better for that decision to be made sooner and not later. The decision coming later than was promised should concern all taxpayers.

The post Royals Put Off Stadium Decision Another Month appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Phase 1: Build the Kansas City Streetcar and make it free to ride.

Phase 2: Spend $25,000 to wrap a streetcar in a Barbie theme:

Kansas City, Missouri, unveiled a Barbie-themed streetcar, dubbed the “Dream Streetcar” earlier this month. The streetcar is decked out in familiar bubblegum-pink wrapping and even rewrites the city’s name as “Kensas City.” A lucky passenger can even choose a seat decked out to resemble characters from the recent Barbie film, like “Stereotypical Barbie, President Barbie, Cowboy Ken, and even Allan.”

Oh, and the whole thing cost taxpayers $25,000.

According to records obtained by KCUR, Kansas City’s NPR affiliate, the hefty public spending is due to the fact that the Dream Streetcar is not actually a sponsored ad for the blockbuster Barbie movie that premiered in July. Instead, it’s a project by the Kansas City Streetcar Authority (KCSA) to increase ridership, even though the streetcar is free to ride.

Phase 3: . . . Profit?

I’m of course kidding about “profit” even being a consideration here—this is government after all—but it is off-putting to see precious taxpayer resources being spent so frivolously. Ridership numbers on the streetcar have no bearing on anything except maybe the egos of city officials. Hit the link, too, for quotes from yours truly and Show-Me Institute alumnus Patrick Tuohey, now at the Better Cities Project.

The post Welcome to “Kensas City”: Barbie-Themed Streetcar Wrap Costs Taxpayers $25,000 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The question: how much over the $34.9 million budgeted for the project could 0.7 miles of rail cost taxpayers? The answer: another $10 million, and possibly more:

“We determined that both of the (contractors) were qualified, the technical proposals were sound, but their costs were above the estimate, and both of their costs were above the budget, significantly so,” KCATA Deputy CEO Dick Jarrold said during a Tuesday presentation to the agency’s Finance Committee. The KCATA is one of four groups heading the riverfront streetcar project, alongside Kansas City, the Kansas City Streetcar Authority and Port Authority of Kansas City. . . .

The Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) has authorized about $9.6 million in additional federal dollars for the riverfront streetcar through the Surface Transportation Block Grant program, and a MARC committee has recommended an additional $1 million in federal Carbon Reduction program grant funds. The programs require local matching funds, which Jarrold said are anticipated from Port KC and the Streetcar Authority in an as-yet undetermined amount. [emphasis mine]

Keep in mind that the estimate for the original plan to extend the streetcar to the riverfront was $22.2 million, meaning the apparent final (?) cost of the line is on course to double that estimate, with or without the local match considered.

Yet, that’s been the track record for this toy train for over a decade now. I wrote here in 2011, 2012 and 2013 and for Forbes in 2014 that the Kansas City streetcar was a profligate and bad idea. And yet, despite the many opportunities to prove naysayers wrong, the streetcar remains a remarkably poor fiscal and policy decision to this day.

The post To Nobody’s Surprise, Riverfront Extension of Kansas City Streetcar Going over Budget appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That said, I should make and reiterate a few points about the Royals’ stadium issue, now that it’s back in the news.

• The stadium renderings are cool. It’s easy to poo-poo big-dollar construction proposals as being sales jobs of dubious eventual reality, but that doesn’t make the prospect of something new any less interesting. The eventual financing plan for the stadium will likely be bad policy, but it’s understandable why people might get excited at what a future ballpark might look like. That’s obviously why they had the press conference this week: to stoke support and excitement.
• But cool renderings don’t change the fact that taxpayers shouldn’t pay for professional sports stadia. The renderings for these stadia could have put a helicopter port on the roof, a rocket ship in the parking lot, and a theme park in center field, but a cool drawing doesn’t make giving tax dollars to rich baseball tycoons an appropriate “investment” by the public. Developments like this generally do not expand the pie of disposable income in a region; instead, they tend to redirect spending that was previously being spent by consumers at other restaurants and entertainment options in the region. Ask bar owners in Westport what they think the immediate impact of the Power & Light District was on their traffic and you’ll get a sense of the potential risks of subsidizing new competition to existing businesses this time around.
• The “$2.8 billion” construction impact figure presented by the Royals is not a game changer. As I told KMBC 9, I believe that the Royals believe their numbers and that stadium construction would create “$2.8 billion” in economic activity in and around the ballpark. But what’s that really mean, other than to repeat the obvious? When the team is promising $1 billion in private financing to go along with $1 billion in public support, yeah, those are two giant wheelbarrows of cash being dumped into one spot that get you pretty close to the headline number. But that doesn’t change the fact that half of the spending would be coming from the public to create a district that would compete with other entertainment districts, including Westport and the Power & Light District.
• And speaking of the taxpayer-subsidized Power & Light District, it hasn’t and won’t ever pay for itself. One of the biggest public spending projects in the last couple of decades was the Power & Light District in Kansas City’s downtown. From the beginning, the city was on the hook to pay off the bonds for the property if tax revenue from the district wasn’t high enough. The result? Over the last 16 years, Kansas City taxpayers paid the nearly $170 million gap between what the district costs and what the district generates in tax revenue to pay the bonds. It’s easy to make promises of success when the cost of failure is borne by someone else, and there’s no guarantee taxpayers—whether in Jackson County or Clay County—won’t get soaked this go-around, too.

There is a bit of deja vu here, of course; about this time in 2022, I was talking about a potential move for the Chiefs, whose lease at the Truman Sports Complex ends when the Royals does. But the takeaway now with the Royals is the same as it was with the Chiefs—sports teams should pay for their playthings themselves. The Royals may be the kings of Kauffman, but when it comes to sovereign action in the real world, public officials should reject spending tax dollars on anything but legitimate responsibilities of government. Subsidizing sports teams isn’t one of those responsibilities.

The post Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Pay for Your Own Stadium appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Jackson Kurtz at KMBC Channel 9 in Kansas City after the Royals finished their press conference and give him my views on the situation. I’ll have more to say on the Royals tomorrow, but in the meantime, here’s the story we were a part of that ran earlier this week.

The post Show-Me Talks Royals Stadium Move on KMBC appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

My general position on taxation has always been about maximizing growth, and specifically moving from income taxes to the least destructive tax for growth—the property tax. That does not mean, however, that I am unaware of or unsympathetic to alternative considerations that could be reasonably offered.

• Property taxes are the least destructive tax for promoting growth, but other objectives beyond “growth” do enter the calculus for policymakers. Is it “fair” for a taxpayer who owns property to get a tax benefit, but not a taxpayer who rents? Are real property taxes problematic in the same way personal property taxes are, or are they completely different policy issues? Like most things in life, tax policy is not a one-dimensional issue; stipulating to that reality is appropriate, even as I support reforms that stoke growth, against possible alterative priorities.
• From a practical perspective, it also isn’t great if seniors on fixed incomes find themselves unable to make their property tax payments if a massive assessment adjustment, like what we’re seeing in Jackson County, makes staying in their longtime homes fiscally impossible.

All that said, cutting the state and local tax base to ribbons, whether on a permanent or temporary basis, is a precarious proposition precisely for the very reason David highlights: unless government spending falls as tax exceptions are made, the cost of government will inevitably fall to the rest of the taxpayers.

And speaking of . . .

Missourians shopping for school supplies, clothes and computers during the state’s tax-free weekend Aug. 4-6 can save up to 5% more than in previous years.

A 2021 Missouri law taking effect this year prevents all cities, counties and special tax districts from charging local sales taxes during the back-to-school weekend.

Tax holiday shoppers have been exempt from the state sales tax of 4.225% since 2004, but many municipalities still charged local sales taxes. With local sales taxes eliminated, this year, shoppers will save up to 9%.

I would love to say that the sales tax holiday for school supplies is a net good for the state and families, but as The Tax Foundation notes:

While sales tax holidays have been politically popular for a long time, they have seen a boost this year as lawmakers look for ways to share surplus funds with taxpayers who are struggling to afford goods and services amid high inflation. But however well-intended they may be, sales tax holidays remain the same as they always have been—ineffective and inefficient. [emphasis mine]

Sales tax holidays have been and always will be dubious tools for promoting reasonable public policy objectives—they simply shift consumer spending patterns instead of changing them and are often used to promote illusory economic development benefits. As with tax credits on income taxes and tax abatements on property taxes, carving up the sales tax base with “tax holidays” can have similarly unintended consequences, even if the policy is good politics and good intentioned. But as with the senior property tax carveout, even a good intentioned sales tax holiday is bad policy.

The post “Tax-Free Weekend” Underscores Importance of Sound, Stable and Uniform Tax Policies appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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The post Tax Free Weekend, Property Tax Freeze, and School Lunches appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That’s why the latest version of Missouri Department of Revenue’s sales and use tax mapping tool is so welcome. A story by the eMissourian is a testament to precisely how I would hope the site would be used by the media and the public:

A purchase in downtown Washington comes with an 8.85 percent sales tax, which includes a 2 percent city sales tax and a 0.375 percent tax for the Washington Area Ambulance District.

Someone making the same purchase in downtown Union would have to pay 9.475 percent in sales tax. While Union has the same 2 percent city sales tax as Washington, consumers also pay a 0.5 ambulance district tax and a 0.5 percent tax for the Union Fire Protection District. St. Clair has the same 9.475 percent sales tax rate, with its fire and ambulance districts both having half cent sales taxes.

While Pacific charges a higher 2.5 percent city sales tax, it has the same overall 9.475 percent sales tax rate because no fire sales tax is shown.

You can find the sales and use taxes in your jurisdiction, and any Missouri jurisdiction, here.

It’s worth noting that while a number of articles this month have referenced the map as “new,” as my colleague Elias Tsapelas might note, it’d be more accurate to characterize it as “improved.” House Bill 1858 in 2018 and Senate Bill 153 in 2021 both helped lead to the new initiative, and perhaps serendipitously those local rate transparency initiatives also coincided with both the Show-Me Checkbook spending transparency projects and parallel spending transparency initiatives by the state treasurer and the state office of administration.

In other words, the transparency initiatives of the late 2010s are starting to bear fruit here in the early 2020s, so while some features on the interactive map may be “new,” the ideas aren’t. Of course, the state can always do more to promote transparency, such as requiring spending transparency from local governments and curricular transparency from schools and districts. But for what this tax map narrowly seeks to do, it does a good job of it.

The post State-Created Tax Map a Solid Tool for Oversight of Local Sales and Use Taxes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.