By Caleb Taylor
Nicole Kaeding, Arkansas: The Road Map To Tax Reform co-author and Director of Special Projects for the Tax Foundation, will speak to members of the Arkansas Legislative Tax Reform and Relief Task Force about reforming Arkansas’s sales taxes on Monday, March 19th.
Arkansas: The Road Map To Tax Reform examines Arkansas’s current tax system and makes concrete recommendations about how to make the state’s tax code fairer and more competitive. Other co-authors include ACRE Scholar and UCA Assistant Professor of Economics Dr. Jeremy Horpedahl, Scott Drenkard, Joseph Bishop-Henchman and Jared Walczak.
Previous meetings of the task force have generally consisted of legislators hearing about all of the different aspects of the state’s tax code. That will change on Monday as Kaeding will offer policy solutions on how to reform sales taxes.
In a blog post at the ACRE Review on November 6th, 2017, Horpedahl and Kaeding suggest broadening the sales tax base by closing exemptions on service-based industries. The subsequent revenue increase from such a change could then be used to reduce personal income tax rates.
Lisa Christensen Gee, a Senior Policy Analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, will also address the task force regarding sales tax reform on Monday.
The task force will also meet on Tuesday, March 20th to allow legislators an opportunity to make recommendations on sales tax rates and exemptions to be considered at the task force’s April meeting.