By Caleb Taylor Arkansas Tax Reform and Relief Legislative Task Force members discussed three tax credits for possible elimination on Monday, October 29th. The three insurance premium tax credits include the New Market Tax Credit ($16 M), the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit ($1 M) and the Home Office Tax Credit ($61 M). In total, these […]
Why Do Arkansas’s Business Taxes Now Rank 46th out of the 50 States?
By Caleb Taylor Arkansas dropped three spots from 43rd to 46th from 2018 to 2019 in the Tax Foundation’s annual Small Business Tax Climate Index. The report was released on September 26th and is authored by the Tax Foundation’s Jared Walczak, Scott Drenkard and Joseph Bishop-Henchman. According to the authors, the index is “designed to […]
Tax Freedom Day — ACRE Economist to Speak about Tax Reform
By Caleb Taylor ACRE Scholar and UCA Assistant Professor of Economics Jeremy Horpedahl will speak about ACRE’s tax research at Arkansas Tax Freedom Day at 12:30 p.m. Friday, April 13th at the rotunda of the Arkansas State Capitol. According to the Tax Foundation, Tax Freedom Day in Arkansas is the date Arkansans have to work […]
Hutchinson Calls for Top Individual Income Tax Rate to Be Cut to 6 Percent
By Caleb Taylor Governor Asa Hutchinson announced his support on Monday in an address to legislators at the beginning of the fiscal session for a reduction of Arkansas’s top individual income tax rate from 6.9 to 6 percent. This rate reduction is along the lines of one of the reform suggestions outlined by ACRE scholar […]
Tax Reform Task Force Cites ACRE Scholar Horpedahl
By Caleb Taylor The Arkansas Legislative Tax Reform and Relief Task Force cited UCA Assistant Professor and ACRE Scholar Dr. Jeremy Horpedahl’s work on property and sales taxes in its interim report released on December 18th. The 180 page report produced by Public Financial Management (PFM) summarizes the task force’s work so far to modernize and […]
Tax Reform Task Force Examines Property Taxes
Legislators on the Arkansas Tax Reform and Relief Task Force on December 6th discussed possible changes to property taxes in the Natural State. Randy Bauer of PFM, the consulting group under contract with the state of Arkansas, began the meeting with a broad overview of recent tax reform efforts across the country. Bauer’s commentary was […]
The Sales Tax, Special Elections, and Voter Turnout
By Dr. Jeremy Horpedahl Arkansas has the third highest combined state and local tax rate in the nation. How did this happen? Research we are conducting at the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics suggests that part of the reason is that many counties and cities have elected to increase their own sales tax rates. […]