Back in August, my colleague Elias Tsapelas wrote a succinct blog post about why the legislature’s intention to pass or extend a bevy of agricultural tax credits was a bad idea. To quote him:
[O]nly 71 entities used these tax credits in the last full year they were active. That’s right, just 71! Forgoing millions of state tax dollars in favor of so few entities seems like the opposite of the governor’s sentiment in the tax rebate discussion. I’d simply ask the same logic to be applied to agricultural tax credits. Research and experience have shown us that these programs do not work. Instead of using the special session to double down on bad policies, a better and fairer solution is to lower taxes for everyone.
Indeed, as Show-Me Institute analysts argued for with SBs 3 & 5, generally the best kind of investment government can make is in “the market.” Like investors, government certainly has the power to make big bets on small industries, but the prudent approach with taxpayer money is to let all Missourians keep and invest their money through tax cuts, rather than dole out more and more cash to rent-seeking special interests.
The good news is the legislature did pass a broad-based tax cut bill in the special session. Quite a treat for taxpayers! The bad news is it also passed the tax credits we warned about to benefit special interests in the agricultural industry. Quite a trick! Boo.
Show-Me Institute staff have noted the problems with “economic development” tax credits for years; those problems include their haphazard creation and the way in which they, in practice, serve to gild the coffers of a host of powerful special interests in the state. Those objections and criticisms are as applicable now as they’ve ever been. It doesn’t matter if tax credits such as these go to large-scale property developers in cities or large-scale farmers in the countryside—it’s bad policy, and wrong, to force the rest of the taxpaying population to underwrite the profits of these private actors.
Taxpayers shouldn’t have to have to endure the “tricks” of tax credits to get the “treats” of better tax policy through income tax cuts. At some point, legislators need to gather the courage and say no to this constant rent seeking, once and for all.
