Kansas GOP flat tax bill is dead in the House. Will Kansans get tax cuts this year?

Kansas Republicans kicked off the 2024 legislative session by quickly passing their flat income tax rate plan.

But then they waited as long as legally allowed to send Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly the bill. She promptly vetoed it.

Nearly four weeks then passed until Tuesday, when the GOP leaders in the House finally attempted to override the second-term governor’s veto. They failed, coming three votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed.

Now, with about six weeks left in the regular session, Republicans are looking for the path forward on taxes. They returned to Topeka in January with tax relief a top priority but Tuesday’s defeat left many fearful it won’t happen.

“I don’t know if we get another tax package,” said Sen. Caryn Tyson, a Parker Republican and chair of the Senate Assessment and Taxation Committee. “We’re gonna try.”

Rep. Bill Sutton, a Gardner Republican, declared the issue dead as he exited the House chamber Tuesday afternoon.

“We didn’t override the veto, so we don’t have a tax package,” he said.

Republicans and Kelly remain locked in the same fight they’ve been in since early 2023. Republicans want a single-rate, or flat, income tax. Kelly opposes the idea, which she calls unsustainable and regressive.

Tuesday’s vote may open up room for negotiation – or make a deal even more unlikely.

Senate President Ty Masterson said he was unsure at this point of the path forward. Last month Masterson told reporters he would not pass a tax plan that didn’t include a single-rate income tax.

After the House vote Tuesday, he said he was reevaluating next steps while expressing frustration that his preferred method of tax cuts could be blocked by a minority of lawmakers alongside the governor.

“It’s only a deal breaker for the governor and a minority, almost a supermajority wants it,” Masterson said of the flat tax. “Maybe there’s some other version of that that would be acceptable.”

Later in the day the Senate Assessment and Taxation Committee placed the full contents of the GOP flat tax plan, with fewer tax breaks on Social Security income, in a separate bill and passed it. The Senate could vote on the policy any day.

In a pivotal election year when every legislative seat is on the ballot, lawmakers in both parties are eager to tell their constituents they’ve cut their taxes.

Democrats are urging Republicans to take the loss as a signal to support Kelly’s tax plan, which had similar components on property and sales tax but increased the standard deduction rather than moving to a flat income tax. House Minority Leader Vic Miller, a Topeka Democrat, urged lawmakers to start with the policies contained in both the Kelly and GOP plans.

“Everybody seems to agree we should start at that point and that’s relief we could and should provide,” he said.

GOP leadership currently appears unlikely to marshal the votes needed to pass a flat tax over Kelly’s veto. Five Republicans voted with Democrats to sustain the veto on Tuesday.

One of those Republicans, Rep. Mark Schreiber of Emporia, originally voted in favor of the plan when it passed the House. But he said he changed his yes vote to a no on Tuesday because of concerns the state’s budget couldn’t sustain the GOP plan.

A flat tax, he said, doesn’t appear to be in the cards this year but slight adjustments to income tax rates may be.

“I think we can come up with a suitable arrangement,” Schreiber said. “That doesn’t mean, you know, next year or in a couple of years they don’t revisit a flat tax in a different way.”

Even lawmakers who voted yes on the flat tax said they were willing to consider tax packages that didn’t include a single-rate income tax.

“I think we need to take things that we all agree on and pass those and then work on something else,” said Rep. Samatha Poetter-Parshall, a Paola Republican who supports a flat rate tax.

Several lawmakers said they wanted to see tax cuts passed, regardless of whether a flat tax was included or not.

“Hopefully we can do something now and we’re not just playing political games and leaving Kansans on the line with nothing,” Rep. Laura Williams, an Olathe Republican, said.

Lawmakers may still consider other income tax adjustments without eliminating the state’s income tax brackets altogether, said Rep. Adam Smith, a Weskan Republican who chairs the House Taxation Committee.

“That’ll just be dependent on the conversations we have if it looks like that can still be included or we can go down another path,” Smith said. He added that he couldn’t imagine a scenario where lawmakers left Topeka without passing tax cuts.

If the Legislature concludes without tax cuts, Republicans are already preparing to cast blame on Kelly. House GOP leadership on Tuesday accused Kelly of playing political games with the tax plan. In a statement, the top lawmakers said House Republicans would prioritize Kansans over political gamesmanship but did not detail the form that would take.

Kelly has promised to call lawmakers back into special session if they conclude their regular session without passing tax cuts.

Rep. Adam Thomas, an Olathe Republican, noted that a special session won’t force any action. He said Republicans had come to the negotiating table with a bill that included several of Kelly’s priorities.

“The inability for the compromise, after we compromise on our end, is very very telling about where the tax debate is and it’s ‘My way or the highway,’” Thomas said of the governor.