According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), House Bill 1585 would target personal income tax relief to Arkansas taxpayers who make over $155,000 per year (the top five percent of earners). This group would...
Keeping low-income families in mind as debate moves forward Last week’s big Medicaid news in Arkansas has been making waves across the country. In short, Arkansas received word from Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius that the state has...
Spending Caps Mean Bad News of Kids and Families Spending caps are budget gimmicks that cause more problems than they solve. They have failed to work in the past, and there is no reason to believe they will work...
Today, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) released a report called “Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States.” According to this report, Low-income taxpayers in Arkansas pay two times the amount...
More details on proposed DHS cuts Tuesday’s budget hearing for the Department of Human Services (DHS) was definitely eventful. The largest state agency, with more 7,500 employees, DHS serves more than 1.2 million Arkansans each year. Most of its...
Budget Cuts Mean More than Politics to Abused Children LITTLE ROCK – Today, the Arkansas Department of Human Services announced cuts to state programs that help abused children. Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families says the cuts, resulting from...
Public safety – Funded by our tax dollars There are probably a lot of things that are funded by our tax dollars that you wouldn’t want to give up. One of those things is public safety, and, in particular,...
Pitching in for the common good As many Arkansans rush to beat the April 17th tax deadline this year, we wanted to take a moment to think about what it is we actually get for our annual payments. No...
It has become trendy of late for think tanks to publish a ranking system that measures the relative tax burden each of the 50 states places on businesses. The Tax Foundation, a conservative think tank that focuses on tax...
After a month of preliminary budget hearings, it came as a surprise this week to see a proposal that would cut more than $20 million from the state budget for fiscal year 2013. Rep. John Burris (R – Harrison)...