Perry Says Kansas Won’t Be Only State Coming After Missouri Businesses August 30, 2013

Texas Gov. Rick Perry in Missouri Thursday. Courtesy: Missouri Times

Texas Governor Rick Perry brought up the back-and-forth business border war between Kansas and Missouri during his swing through the St. Louis area Thursday.
“If they see the continual taxation burden in Missouri, it’s not just going to be Rick Perry showing up in Missouri knocking on the doors of all the businesses,” Perry said, according to the Associated Press.
The Texas Governor starred at two events in the St.Louis area. In one, his mission waste pitch his home state of Texas as an attractive place for Missouri businesses to move.
Perry has been featured on radio and TV commercials broadcast in Missouri leading up to Thursday’s appearance.
Perry says he is not offended when other governors recruit business in Texas.
“By competing against each other we make each other stronger,” Perry said.
Thursday evening at a political event in support of the Republican effort to override GovernorJay Nixon’s veto of a tax cut bill, the Missouri Times reported Perry claimed the tax cut and fewer regulations will help Missouri.
“’The fact is this: I truly believe that if you free-up individuals from over taxation, from over regulation, from over litigation, you make sure that you have public schools that are still delivering and skilled workforces, nobody is going to leave Missouri and leave anywhere,” Perry told the crowd, eliciting cheers.’
Missouri Governor Nixon spent part of Thursday in St. Louis as well.
He’s defending the veto and campaigning throughout Missouri. He’s hoping to round up enough votes to preserve his veto when lawmakers return to the Capitol for the veto session starting September 11.
“You take this fiscal experiment they’re running and take $850 million of general revenue out of this budget and imperil our triple-A credit rating, it is not the way to move the Show-Me State forward,” Nixon said Thursday.

Missouri Lawmakers Lobby for ‘Border War’ Tax Cut On The Border May 21, 2013

A trio of Republican lawmakers, including St.Sen. Eric Schmitt from St. Louis County, campaigned in Kansas City Tuesday for the 2013 Missouri tax cut bill.
Schmitt met with members of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce at midday.
One of the Kansas City Chamber’s legislative priorities this year was finding ways to compete with the tax cuts and incentives the state of Kansas has used to attract Missouri companies to cross the state line.
Schmitt repeated his claim that while Kansas was first to cut taxes on corporations, small business and its income tax rates–Kansas wasn’t the first to think of it.
“We’ve been working on this before Kansas did,,” he told KMBC 9 News, “but this year, we actually got it done.”
Missouri lawmakers passed a measure calling for a drop in the corporate income tax to be phased in over several years; a tax cut for smaller companies–also to be phased in.
The measure also includes a cut in the Missouri income tax rate from 6% to 5.3%. It is the first such income tax cut in Missouri in 90 years..
Schmitt was hosted by Lee’s Summit Republican Senator Will Kraus. Some of the elements pushed in Schmitt’s bill were combined into Kraus’ version.
Clay County St. Rep. T.J Berry was the bill’s original House sponsor.
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has not said if he’ll sign the bill or not. Nixon recently said he was worried about an estimated 800 million the bill coust cost the state because of the cuts.
Krause, Schmitt and Berry claim the Nixon number is wrong, that it’s too high. They claim it’s more in the range of $400-$700 million.
Kraus also countered by saying over a decade, the state would get a billion dollars more in money from a strong economy through the tax cuts.
“To bring in an additional one billion dollars over a 10 year period, to cut 700-800 million, i think is a responsible way to do tax policy in Missouri,” said Kraus.
In addtion to cutting taxes, Kansas offers incentives to Missouri companies to move across the state line.
One company, Central States Capital Markets, moved five miles to relocate in Kansas.
The firm, an investment company, had been on the western edge of Kansas City’s County Club plaza.
Dan Stepp, an executive with the firm, said it was the Kansas financial incentives, more than that tax rates, that helped the company to decided to relocate.
He also said the Kansas City suburban location in Prairie Village, Kansas, was easier to get to for many of the firm’s customers.

Kansas ‘Border War’ Casts a Big Shadow in Missouri House Tax Talks April 2, 2013

(AP) – Kansas remains the reference point as Missouri lawmakers consider whether to cut income taxes and raise the state sales tax.

During a House committee hearing Tuesday, business groups argued Missouri must cut income taxes to keep employers from being lured across the western border by recent tax cuts in Kansas.

But education officials pointed to budget gaps in Kansas and expressed fears that schools could lose funding if Missouri cuts its tax revenues.

The hearing came as a St. Louis-based nonprofit group called The Missouri Budget Project began airing ads opposing the legislation while citing the potential loss of $960 million of revenues annually.

Senate Panel Moves Brownback Tax Plan Ahead February 12, 2013

A Kansas Senate committee has endorsed most of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax plan.

The GOP-dominated Assessment and Taxation Committee discussed Brownback’s proposals for less than 10 minutes Tuesday before approving a bill on a voice vote.

The action sends the legislation to the full Senate for debate, possibly next week.

Brownback wants to position Kansas to eventually eliminate personal income taxes. His plan calls for phasing in cuts in individual income tax rates over the next four years.

But the state also must stabilize its budget. The bill scraps an income tax deduction for interest on home mortgages and cancels a decrease in the state sales tax scheduled for July.

The committee jettisoned only the proposal from Brownback to eliminate an income tax deduction for property taxes on homes.

Kansas Senate Panel Looking at Brownback’s Tax Plan February 5, 2013

(AP) – A Kansas Senate committee is preparing to debate Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s proposals to cut income tax rates and scrap two popular deductions for homeowners.

The Assessment and Taxation Committee planned to take up the governor’s proposals Tuesday morning.

Brownback’s stated goal is to phase out individual income taxes, beginning with more reductions after aggressive cuts enacted last year. But he and lawmakers also must find revenue to stabilize the state budget.

Brownback proposes eliminating income tax deductions for the property taxes paid on homes and the interest on home mortgages. He also wants to cancel a drop in the state sales tax scheduled to take effect in July.