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The post Financial Data on Missouri’s 20 Largest Cities appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The cities covered in the report are:

• Ballwin
• Blue Springs
• Cape Girardeau
• Chesterfield
• Columbia
• Florissant
• Independence
• Jefferson City
• Joplin
• Kansas City
• Lee’s Summit
• O’Fallon
• Springfield
• St. Charles
• St. Joseph
• City of St. Louis
• St. Peters
• University City
• Wentzville
• Wildwood

Click here to read more, or download the report by clicking on the link below.

The post Tax Burden in Missouri’s 20 Largest Cities appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Tax Burden in Missouri’s 20 Largest Cities appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A good example is electricity bills in Missouri. From 2008 to 2017, the average retail electric bill in Missouri rose 29 percent—the second-biggest increase in the country over that time period. After the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TJCA) lowered corporate tax rates from 35 to 21 percent, Missouri utilities reduced electric rates for customers. And it wasn’t just a coincidence; Missouri’s utilities specifically stated that the reason for the rate decreases was the corporate tax cuts.

For the past decade, electric rate increases for three of the four investor-owned utilities in Missouri have far outpaced average salary increases and general inflation. This means that a larger percentage of Missourians’ budgets are being dedicated to paying electric bills, with less being left over for other needs. However, that finally changed between 2018 and 2019 (2018 was the first full year of TJCA implementation) when electricity rates fell by 6 percent—customers of Missouri’s four investor-owned utilities saw cumulative savings of $159 million in 2018 alone.

In sum, just because you may not run a corporation doesn’t mean what happens to corporate tax rates doesn’t affect you. If a decrease in corporate tax rates meant an electric rate decrease for Missourians, it’s fair to believe a corporate tax rate increase would result in electric rate increases. And, as the last decade has shown, that’s an expensive proposition for all Missourians.

The post Does Your Household Pay Corporate Taxes? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Over the past decade, Missouri’s population grew by only about 160,000 residents, or 2.8 percent. This growth badly trails the national rate of 7.4 percent and every neighboring state except for Illinois. In fact, only eleven states in the country experienced less population growth than Missouri. Missouri dropped one spot in total population rank, from 18th to 19th. This is a significant decline from the state’s high-water mark of 5th at the turn of the 20th century.

Census results are important because they have real-world implications for states. Aside from being a measure of a state’s relative desirability, these population totals determine the apportionment of representation in Congress over the next decade. After losing a seat following the 2010 census, Missouri’s population is still sufficient to maintain eight congressional districts for another ten years, but Illinois was not so lucky. Along with Missouri’s neighbor to the east, six other states will be losing a congressional seat: California, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. States gaining these lost seats will be Florida, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, and Texas, which gets two additional seats.

While it can be difficult to fully understand what is driving the country’s population shifts, there appears to be a relationship with cumulative tax burdens. The state’s losing seats rank 1st, 8th, 10th, 18th, 23rd, and 26th in total tax burdens. On the other hand, the state’s gaining seats rank 11th, 21st, 32nd, 34th, 43rd, and 47th (Texas). While this isn’t the only factor in migration, people are indisputably moving from high-tax states to states with lower taxes.

State and local governments competing for residents via tax rates is not a new idea, and is something my colleagues have written about for years. Charlies Tiebout originally proposed the idea that people would “vote with their feet” by moving to communities with their preferred level of public services and taxes. If Missouri’s population growth continues to lag much of the country, there’s reason to believe the state’s taxes are contributing to the problem. Over the next decade, it should be a priority for Missouri’s elected officials to bring more people to the Show-Me State, or we could face the same fate as Illinois.

The post Missouri’s Population Growth Is Still Lagging appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While tax exporting may succeed in disproportionately burdening nonresidents with a rental car tax, the taxes have negative economic effects for the taxing jurisdiction. In addition to lowering the quantity of car rental services demanded, there is evidence that consumers will travel to lower tax jurisdictions nearby, as was the case when Kansas City, Missouri levied a $4 per day rental car tax. Residents and nonresidents alike traveled across the state line to nearby Kansas, which offered a lower effective tax rate on an ad valorem basis, to avoid the tax in Missouri. This harmed Kansas City, Missouri’s economy, resulting in missed tax revenue, lower output, and potentially lost jobs in the rental car industry.

I myself have gone across the state line to rent a car in Kansas to save money. Many people in the region have done this, I am guessing, and the impact adds up. The paper cites research that put numbers to this behavior regarding rental cars:

Tax scholars William Gale and Kim Rueben found that a $4 per day rental car levy in Kansas City, Missouri—an effective tax rate of about 13 percent on an economy vehicle—reduced the number of customers at affected branches by 9 percent relative to branches that were unaffected. While consumers had less than a proportionate response to the tax, they altered their behavior by using other transportation options.

Kansas City cannot tax its way to prosperity. If city taxes remain high while services remain low, consumers and residents will continue to do what they have been doing: vote with their feet.

The post Taxes and Fees Affect Shopping Decisions appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The study, issued by the government of the District of Columbia in December 2017, “aims to calculate the combined state and local tax burdens that would apply to a hypothetical family at five different income levels living in D.C. as well as the largest city in each state.” Kansas City is included and St. Louis is not, and neither are some cities that we’ve identified as peers. But the data are valuable nonetheless.

The estimated tax burden for a family earning $50,000 in Kansas City—the median income is $47,000—is $5,444. That’s 10.9 percent of income and includes income, property, sales, and auto taxes. This places us 8th in the country, ahead of places well-known as expensive such as Boston, New York, Portland, Seattle, Denver, and Los Angeles.

Dave Helling of The Kansas City Star has pointed out that taxes in Kansas City are also regressive. This report supports that conclusion regarding auto sales taxes, stating that “Providence, Rhode Island; Bridgeport, Connecticut; and Kansas City, Missouri are the cities with the highest automobile tax burdens across all income levels.” Combined with all other taxes, a Kansas City family earning $25,000 pays a combined tax burden of 12.6 percent; 8th highest of the cities measured. For a family earning $100,000, the burden is lower at 11.2 percent, placing us 12th.

What’s worse, the sales tax estimates are low for Kansas City. On page 39, the study lists Kansas City’s sales tax rate to be 8.475 percent, but anyone living here knows it goes much higher due to the proliferation of special taxing districts across the city.

Individuals can determine for themselves if City Hall is providing a return worthy of the investment, but the debate over whether taxes are high is settled. Kansas City is a high-tax city. Our taxes are regressive, too, but they are certainly high.

The post The Tax Burden in Kansas City Is High appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But where Dave and I part ways is on his statement that "Kansas City’s tax burden is relatively low." Sure, folks can look at local taxes in different ways and come to differing judgments. But I have a hard time believing most people would look at how, and how much, Kansas City takes from its residents and say that KC's tax burden isn't so bad.

For my part, I would judge Kansas City's tax burdens like I judge the state's—based on its income, sales, and property taxes. Most cities don't have an earnings tax at all, meaning that relative to Kansas City's peers its earnings tax is way above average. Kansas City's sales taxes are prodigious, too, with rates that exceed 10% in many communities. Our sales taxes are so high that last year we had the 15th highest sales tax rates of America's 50 largest cities. That isn't relatively low, either; relatively, that's high. And while property taxes are often difficult to compare, the Brookings Institution found in 2013 that Jackson, Platte, Clay, and Cass Counties all were well above average when it came to property taxes paid and property taxes paid relative to home value.

Kansas City's taxes aren't low at all; in fact, they're quite high.

Dave's political judgment may be right, of course: Kansas City's earnings tax may well be renewed because residents like the idea of other people paying for the city's services. But while the earnings tax shares its misery across jurisdictional lines, misery shared is not misery solved. Rather than try to export our high tax problems, we should be trying to reduce them. Only then can we ever really become a "relatively low tax city."

The post Kansas City’s Taxes Aren’t “Relatively Low” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

* Edmundson's Commercial Rate of 0.5 was just raised to 1.0.

** The total commercial property in these cities is so small that it raises very little money, whatever the rate may be.

Assessed values and rates are 2014 figures taken from the Missouri State Auditor's Office 2014 Property Tax Rates

Former Show-Me Institute Policy Researcher Michael Rathbone has taken Edmundson to task over this issue before, but the other municipalities listed have similar (if less extreme) taxation policies, shifting much of the cost of government services away from residents and onto commercial property owners. Residents in these areas might enjoy the low tax rates on their property (if they pay property tax at all), but it is short-sighted—not to mention unfair—to expect the owners of commercial property to pick up the slack.

The post Higher Property Taxes: The Cost of Doing Business? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

My colleague Rik Hafer and I decided to compare Missouri’s income taxes to those of other states. In our anaylysis, we went beyond looking at states’ top marginal income tax rates or income taxes collected per capita. Using tax preparation software, we examined how much an average family of four would have to pay in income taxes in each state. This is a new way to look at how income taxes actually affect households by giving people an idea of how much they would owe if they were to live in a particular state.

So where does Missouri rank? Give our paper a look and find out.

20150814 – Compairing Income Tax Liability Accross States – Hafer_Rathbone.pdf

The post Show-Me Institute Presents: Comparing Income Tax Liability Across States: Where Does Missouri Rank? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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So what exactly is the reckless Kansas policy that the Post-Dispatch editors tell us must be avoided at all cost? First, Kansas lowered its income tax rate from 6.45 percent to 4.9 percent on individual income. For small businesses, namely those organized as S-Corporations, LLCs, Partnerships, and Sole Proprietorships, cases in which business income that is passed through to owners, Kansas eliminated the income tax altogether.

What does economics tell us about the likely effect of such a policy? For simplicity, assume that there are two main sources of income: labor and capital. The former is the payment for supplying work effort to a firm. The latter is the payment for resources that you provide to companies and is usually returned to you after the risk you face is realized. So income from loans and other assets, along with returns to entrepreneurial activity, are deemed capital income. Given that government has to raise revenues for public needs, which should be taxed more — capital or labor? In research that Christophe Chamley and Kenneth Judd conducted independently, the conclusion is unambiguous: tax rates on capital income are very detrimental. Chamley’s and Judd’s work is in line with the analysis that two Nobel Laureates put forward: Peter Diamond and James Mirrlees, who argued that taxes should be applied to the most inelastically supplied goods. Because capital is so mobile, its supply is very elastic and the optimal tax rate on capital income is zero.

Ironically, the editors at the Post-Dispatch accept that people on the Kansas border are very mobile, just not in response to taxes. They argue that people move from Missouri to Johnson County, Kan., because of school quality. The unstated premise is that these people still work in Missouri. Will a substantial tax nudge not lead to even more people seeking out those Johnson County schools? Or, more importantly, induce employers to plant businesses where their employees want to live?

The issue for policymakers is this: for a given level of state revenue, what set of tax policies will yield the revenues while doing the least economic damage? Kansas is trying an experiment. There is an economic rationale for this experiment. If you have to tax income, there is good reason to try to separate out taxes on labor income from taxes on capital income, because capital is highly mobile. In spite of the editorial board’s heated rhetoric, the economic fundamentals favor Kansas on this one.

Joseph Haslag is chief economist and Michael Podgursky is a co-founder and director of the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Taxes Do Harm Growth appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Like most people, NFL players have to pay taxes on their income. A team located where income tax rates are lower theoretically could offer contracts that are lower in nominal dollars but allow the players to receive higher take-home pay (for the purposes of this post, I am not taking into consideration deductions and tax loopholes, nor am I factoring in cost-of-living adjustments).  Which team’s players have the lowest income tax burden in the NFL? Well, there a couple of things to consider. First, what is the state and local income tax rate for where the players play their eight home games? Next, what is the state and local income tax rate for each of the team’s divisional foes (the players will travel for a road game against each of their divisional opponents)? The other games on a team’s schedule change from year to year, so the combined burden the players face will change somewhat from year to year.

So, for the 11 games (out of the 16 total) that a NFL team has on its schedule every year, is there a noticeable difference between the income tax burdens that the players on different teams face? From my calculations, there is (basic calculations —I only used the top marginal rate, so these numbers do not take into account the lower rates for the lower brackets and these numbers are slightly higher than they really would be). Take, for example, the Houston Texans. A team member who plays a game in Houston would pay no income taxes at either the state or local level. Therefore, for the eight games played in Houston, a Houston player will pay no income taxes. A Houston player will pay no income taxes for the road games in Jacksonville and Nashville, and $1,973.13 for the one game in Indianapolis. Therefore, the total income tax burden for a Houston Texans player making the median salary for these 11 games is $1,973.13. In contrast, a NFL player making the median salary would face a state and local income tax burden of close to $46,000 if he played for the Oakland Raiders (9.3 percent tax rate for eight games in Oakland and one game in San Diego plus the 4.63 percent and 7 percent rates for the games in Denver and Kansas City, respectively). Multiply that figure by 53 (the total number of players on the active roster) and the burden on a team’s players can increase substantially. If you used the mean salary ($1,900,000) instead of the median salary, the burden also increases.

Would this tax burden make much of a difference? I cannot say definitively (I am not an economist), but if one team had to pay a couple of million dollars, which counts against the cap, to just the income taxes, while another team only paid $100,000 or $200,000, I can tell you which team I would rather own.

The post Another Way To Keep Score? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Just how rich does this make Albert? Well, one local sportscaster estimated today that if Albert bats five times each game next year for the Angels, he will be raking in a cool $30,000 each time he steps into the batter’s box. Not bad, huh?

But if it makes you feel any better, it may not be all win-win for our legendary No. 5. Consider income taxes. Missouri’s top personal income tax rate is 6 percent, which kicks in at $9,000 (he would have also paid an additional 1 percent earnings tax [click on policy study and scroll down to page 46] in Saint Louis). In comparison, California’s top rate is 10.3 percent for incomes above $1 million (of course it might not STAY that way). I am not the only one to notice the possible influence that income tax rates could have had on Albert’s decision (this was regarding the offer from the Miami Marlins).

However, at the margins, how much of a difference would these tax rates have made on Albert’s decision? First, consider that Albert will only have to pay this 10.3 percent top rate for games played in California. He will play a good chunk of his games in states with NO personal income taxes (Washington and Texas). Now, I am not an economist and there are other factors involved here, but just doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations for the home games, I found that Albert would pay slightly more than $4.6 million more in taxes over the life of his contract in Anaheim than Saint Louis. Considering the supposed $30 million to $40 million difference in value of the contracts, would the tax factor make that much of a difference? It is certainly possible (even though Albert did decide to leave). If the Angels had offered him the same amount as the Cardinals, the tax difference would cost Albert approximately $3.7 million.

Who is to say if the difference would matter, especially for a single individual who has to weigh many factors in his decision to move. However, if you are a business, that tax difference could influence a decision between paying taxes or hiring a couple of new employees. Just some things to ponder while Albert packs his bags.

The post A Heavenly Deal? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The other three states — as well as New Hampshire and Tennessee, which tax only interest and dividend income — all stayed at the same number of seats. That means their growth was average, or near average.

All 10 states that lost representation have a state income tax.

According to the Tax Foundation, the eight states gaining seats in congress have an average total tax burden — including taxes on income, sales, and property — ranking of 28.3, on a scale where 1 is the state with the highest tax burden and 50 has the lowest. The 10 states losing seats have an average ranking of 20. If you remove Louisiana from the equation, because of its low tax burden and the fact that that state lost a number of residents after Hurricane Katrina, the remaining nine states have a more striking ranking of 16.7.

Another interesting note is that Washington, which gained a seat, has a high total tax burden but no income tax — and only a month ago, that state’s voters soundly defeated a proposal that would have instituted one.

I don’t claim to have demonstrated causation with this brief review of Census data for a blog post. But the noted examples show a striking correlation between lower taxes overall, and especially the lack of income taxation, for population growth. And when populations grow, economies often grow with them.

To read further Show-Me Institute research about to these topics, please visit the taxation section of our main website.

The post Striking Correlations Between Income Taxes and Congressional Reapportionment appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to an analysis by Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University, [LeBron] James’s net present value tax savings on his salary are between $6 million and $8 million by living in Miami versus his home town of Akron.

This demonstrates how taxes can incite people and businesses to change their behavior. When tax rates differ across geographies, individuals and businesses have an incentive to move to the area of lower burden. This is largely why states that do not tax income experience larger rates of growth than states that do.

Later in the article:

While LeBron’s departure got extraordinary media attention, it is hardly unique. In the early 1990s, Ohio was the home of 43 Fortune 500 companies. Twenty years later the number is 24. Census Bureau data show that from 2004-2008 Ohio saw a net outmigration of $6 billion of income and some 97,000 taxpayers. Even Ohio’s famously liberal Senator, the late Howard Metzenbaum, moved to Florida late in his life to reduce his estate taxes.

If Missouri were to reduce or eliminate its income tax, then it would encourage more individuals and businesses (and professional athletes!) to locate here.

I have no means to verify or disprove this, but perhaps James used the Show-Me Institute’s IDEAS application in his decision process. Individuals can use the site to compare competitive tax environments across states, and I encourage our blog readers to play with the site to see how they would fare if they relocated.

The post LeBron James Votes With His Feet (And Perhaps Uses Show-Me Institute’s IDEAS Application?) appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I would guess that most Illinois residents who can easily purchase smokes or gas in Missouri — such as the many St. Clair and Madison County residents who work in downtown St. Louis — already do so. The current tax difference on cigarettes is large enough to distort economic decisions. If the Illinois legislature increases it by another $1, the marginal changes might not be as large as one would expect, but they will certainly exist, and to Missouri’s benefit.

The post Illinois Legislature Voting on Increasing Tax Collections in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Let me briefly review my empirical evidence. I looked at more than 100 MSAs in the United States. The dependent variable I studied was the ratio of aggregate income reported by the U.S. Census for each primary city in that MSA to the aggregate income for the entire MSA. Basically, I measured the size of the city economy relative to the suburban economy. I then estimated a regression in which the city-to-MSA income ratio was the dependent variable and the earnings tax rate was the independent variable. The result was a significant negative correlation; in other words, cities with higher earnings tax rates tend to have smaller economies relative to their suburbs than cities with lower earnings tax rates. This result held both when using the 1990 Census as the data source and the 2000 Census as the data source.

In the article, I argued that this empirical finding was entirely consistent with sophisticated models of business and household locations within local economies. My analysis was grounded in a widely cited paper by Haughwout and Inman (2001). In it, they analyzed a model economy in which people living in a city took the tax structure as given and made consequent location decisions. When dealing with aggregate economic data, even at the city level, economists do not have a laboratory to run their experiments. Facts are extracted from the data — these are the economists’ observations — and economic theory is employed to account for these facts. Other models exist, but the Haughwout and Inman model can account for the many empirical regularities observed in city growth around the country.

Professor Strauss took an alternative approach and asked a different question. He estimated a regression in which the dependent variable is the growth rate of income in an MSA. The growth rate was computed for the period 1969 through 2007. His regression uses at least two independent variables. One is a dummy variable set equal to one for an MSA in which the primary city has an earnings tax, and set equal to zero otherwise. The other independent variable is the income level for the MSA in 1969, the so-called initial income level. The basis for Prof Strauss’ inquiry was the notion of economic convergence. If the coefficient on the initial income level is negative and statistically significant, the evidence indicates that cities with higher initial income levels tend to grow slower than cities with lower initial income levels. The convergence hypothesis follows, because the evidence suggests that cities starting off poor tend to catch up to the initially richer cities. The convergence hypothesis has been applied to cross-country datasets, and is useful for explaining why Japan and Korea — and, more recently, China — grow so fast. The return to capital is higher in these poor countries, and provides an opportunity for them to catch up to those already-rich countries. The convergence hypothesis cannot explain why Sub-Saharan Africa remains so poor. For our purposes, it is not obvious why convergence should apply to MSAs, but I will blog about this lesson more fully in the future.

In Prof. Strauss’ results, the coefficient on the earnings tax dummy is not significantly different from zero after one includes the MSA’s initial income level as an explanatory variable. He concludes that the earnings tax does not explain economic growth. He interprets these findings as indicating that cities across the United States are catching up and not affected by earnings taxes. I would proffer a slightly different interpretation. Metro areas that started off with lower incomes in 1969 are, on average, catching up to cities that started off with higher incomes. His unit of measurement is the MSA, not the city. This is kind of interesting. At first pass, convergence can characterize MSAs across the United States. The more difficult part is why rural areas are not catching up. If convergence can be attributed to low capital in the low-income metro areas, then it seems that rural areas — ones with low capital accumulation — would catch up to high-income urban areas. For me, the nagging problem about the convergence hypothesis is that Rocheport should start looking like Columbia in terms of capital. But Rocheport’s economy does not look like the Columbia economy. Agglomeration, or increasing returns, probably has something to do with this. As I said, I will save this digression for a future blog.

I do not dispute Strauss’s findings; however, he did mischaracterize my research. He asked a different question than I did. I contend that my question is more relevant for the question of earnings taxes. People can avoid the earnings tax by eschewing the political jurisdiction in which the tax is implemented. Insofar as the suburban area is not a perfect substitute for the city area, economic efficiency is lost and the earnings tax is distorting people’s behavior.

Consider the following situation for illustrative purposes. Suppose there are two cities. In City A, the metro area’s income increased at a 1-percent annual rate between 1969 and 2007. However, all the businesses moved out of a city and into the suburbs in 2000. In City B, the metro area’s income increased at a 1-percent annual rate between 1969 and 2007. In both City A and City B, Prof. Strauss’ measure of income growth would be 1 percent. If I further told you that City A had a 1-percent earnings tax and City B had no earnings tax, then according to Prof. Strauss’ unit of measure — the growth rate of income in the MSA — would indicate no statistical relationship between the earnings tax dummy and the growth rate of MSA income.

In contrast, I estimate the regression for city income to MSA income in 2000 and find a negative relationship between the earnings tax rate and the city-to-MSA income. The purpose of this illustration is to point out that his results do not contradict mine. His findings do not render my interpretation of the evidence as faulty. He asked a different question and got a different answer. Thus, a reasonable person could walk away believing both results are accurately depicted. Because we have different units of measurement for the city economy, we are clearly asking (and answering) different questions.

My results were mischaracterized in the Kansas City Star’s recent op-ed by Prof. Strauss. My goal is to properly characterize both sets of results. I am sure that more “teachable” moments will be forthcoming. Let’s proceed with skepticism before we accept any economic interpretation of the results.

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