The ebb and flow on Oklahoma tax cuts

The conservative Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, which pushed hard for a reduction in Oklahoma’s income tax rate during the 2012 legislative session, wants you to know it has no plans to give up that fight.

OCPA President Michael Carnuccio issued a statement Thursday seeking to make that point clear. One day earlier Tina Dzurisin, a policy impact director for the think tank, had said the OCPA would focus more of its time on other areas such as workers’ compensation reform and pension reform as opposed to “expending so much energy on a proposal that the Legislature didn’t feel like they were quite ready to put through.”

The OCPA has promoted a plan, backed by former Reagan economic adviser Arthur Laffer, to immediately cut Oklahoma’s top personal income tax rate by 3 percentage points, to 2.25 percent, and eventually phase it out entirely.

Carnuccio says his group is working to conduct new research with Laffer, to be released soon, and will “continue to build the case for Oklahoma becoming the next no-income tax state.”

The question will be whether lawmakers will pursue it. There was considerable chatter ahead of the 2012 session about cutting taxes, but that doesn’t seem to be the case presently. Gov. Mary Fallin sought to cut the top rate to 3.5 percent and simplify the tax code, but her plan and others wound up being tabled.

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