Philip Gunn is convinced that if Mississippi would swap its personal income tax for higher sales taxes on most things people in this state purchase, new residents would come streaming in.
The House speaker is having, however, a hard time convincing enough people of that to get his belief enacted.
When Gunn tried to rush his complicated and unstudied tax-swap proposal through the Legislature earlier this year, it got rejected in the Senate, a body equally dominated by Republicans.
The state’s business community also has its doubts. It doesn’t like some of the tradeoffs in Gunn’s proposal. For example, purchasers of groceries would see their sales tax cut in half, but those who buy their food already prepared would see the tax rise to 9.5% (even more in those cities, such as Greenwood, which tack on a local sales tax on restaurants to fund tourism efforts). Such a tax swap might be good for grocers, but not so good for restaurateurs.
Business leaders just don’t see eliminating Mississippi’s already modest personal income tax as a major priority. During legislative hearings last month, the head of the Mississippi Economic Council, the state’s chamber of commerce, told the House speaker that cutting or eliminating the personal income tax has not even registered as an issue in a series of meetings the MEC has been holding.
The MEC rightfully believes that people are settling elsewhere than Mississippi not because the taxes are too high but because the opportunities are too few. It wants legislators to focus on what might better reverse the state’s population losses, such as workforce development, education improvements, better infrastructure and more effective marketing of the state.
One might expect Gunn to be getting pushback from Democratic groups, which argue that consumption taxes are, contrary to Republican ideology, the least fair, since they hit hardest on those who can least afford to pay. But the speaker is also meeting resistance from what would normally be similarly minded conservatives.
That should tell him something: namely that if he plans to ride this issue to a possible run for governor in 2023, he may have picked the wrong horse to ride.
- The Greenwood Commonwealth
