Occupational licensing is a government issued permission slip to work for some people in certain professions. Roughly one in five US workers need such a permission slip. The Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm, ranked Arkansas as the 6th most burdensome state for licensing in their latest edition of License to Work, a publication […]
ACRE Review
Dr. Horpedahl Explains Tax Proposals on Capitol View
Dr. Jeremy Horpedahl, ACRE Scholar and UCA Associate Professor of Economics, recently appeared on the television program Capitol View with host Jay Bir. They discussed Arkansas’s tax system and how recently proposed changes by Gov. Hutchinson might impact Arkansas taxpayers and the state budget. You can watch the full interview online from KARK. The changes […]
Horpedahl, Johns Discuss the Upcoming Special Tax Session on “Believe in Arkansas”
By Joseph Johns Dr. Jeremy Horpedahl and I spoke with Ryan Norris, State Director of the Arkansas Chapter of Americans for Prosperity, on his Believe in Arkansas podcast. Our conversation focused on the proposed state tax changes and more broadly about both tax and spending issues in Arkansas over the past few years. The first […]
Mitchell, Johns Discuss Taxes and LTRF on Dave Elswick Show
By Joseph Johns ACRE Director David “Mitch” Mitchell and I spoke on the Dave Elswick Show on Monday, October 4th, 2021, about the upcoming Arkansas special legislative session. We discussed two main tax cut bills currently under consideration by the legislature. The first plan, by Joint Budget Committee Co-Chair Senator Jonathan Dismang [R-Searcy] would reduce […]
Arkansans Could See Big Savings from Special Session
By Joseph Johns and Jeremy Horpedahl The Arkansas legislature may be meeting in the near future to consider changes to the income tax that individuals, families, and small businesses pay. So far we are aware of two potential plans to lower taxes, and more could be proposed at a special session this fall. The plans […]
Shine More Light
By Mavuto Kalulu Do you know how Arkansas state and local governments are spending COVID-19 relief funds received from the federal government? In my most recent op-ed I commend the openness of the steering committees Governor Hutchinson created to advise on how to allocate the funds. The two committees, the CARES Act steering Committee, and […]
Occupational Licensing Review Committee Kicks Off Second Session
By Zach Burt The Occupational Licensing Review Subcommittee recently began its second-ever round of license reviews since its creation in 2019. Representatives from the Department of Labor and Licensing and the Department of Agriculture presented arguments to the committee about the importance of licensing abstracters, plant breeders, industrial hemp growers, and agricultural seed dealers/labelers. On […]
How to Curb Corruption
By Caleb Taylor How can local governments discourage corruption among public officials? Create more systems that provide for checks and balances, says ACRE Policy Analyst Joyce Ajayi in “Curb temptation” published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on July 16. Ajayi writes: In his book “Principles of Fraud Examination,” Joseph Wells, the founder and chairman of the […]
Occupational Licensing Successes and Shortcomings in 2021
By Alex Kanode The 2021 legislative session saw many changes concerning licensing of occupations in Arkansas. The Red Tape Reduction Working Group released a 2018 report stating that there were 704,141 occupational licenses in Arkansas. That amounted to 52 percent of the state’s labor force at the time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, […]
Reducing Arkansas’s Income Tax Rate To Zero
By Caleb Taylor Can Arkansas reduce its income tax burden to zero? ACRE Scholar and UCA Associate Professor of Economics Dr. Jeremy Horpedahl outlines how Arkansas can accomplish gradually reducing its income tax rate to zero percent in “Getting to zero” published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on June 28th. Horpedahl writes that gradually reducing the […]