The proposal faces uncertain prospects even within the Republican Party: the Georgia House speaker has signaled preference for a more gradual approach, Gov. Brian Kemp has been cool to full elimination, and fiscal analysts warn the revenue math does not close without offsetting tax increases or significant cuts to public services.
Georgia Senate Republican leaders on Wednesday backed a proposal to eliminate the state’s personal income tax by 2032, becoming the latest GOP-led legislature to pursue full income tax abolition despite unresolved questions about how to replace the revenue.
The push is intertwined with intraparty politics. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who leads the state Senate, has made eliminating income taxes a centerpiece of his 2026 campaign for governor. State Sen. Blake Tillery, a Vidalia Republican who chaired a committee to study abolition, is among the candidates to succeed Jones as lieutenant governor.
“This is the first vote that we are going to get to take to address affordability,” Tillery said.
The revenue gap
Georgia’s personal income tax is projected to collect about $16.5 billion this year — 44% of the state’s general revenue — making abolition a significant fiscal undertaking.
The Senate plan would start by cutting both the individual and corporate income tax rate to 4.99%, a step Republicans broadly support and that would reduce tax revenue by an estimated $800 million. The corporate rate would then be frozen while individual cuts deepen: starting in 2027, the plan would exempt the first $50,000 of income for a single filer or $100,000 for a married couple, up from the current $12,000 and $24,000.
About 70% of Georgians reported less than $100,000 of taxable income in 2024, according to state figures, a data point Tillery cited in arguing the exemption structure targets working families. “It is a plan that gives benefits first to hardworking families,” he said.
The initial rate cut combined with the expanded exemption would lower state revenue by $3.8 billion in the 2027 budget year alone, according to the Associated Press. Tillery said the state could use surplus tax revenue and return to borrowing for capital expenditures rather than paying cash — but acknowledged those moves would likely not close the gap in the first year, let alone offset the additional $13 billion in cuts needed to reach zero.
Tillery also pointed to trimming business income and sales tax breaks he described as “corporate welfare” as a potential source of offsetting revenue. Lawmakers and Gov. Kemp have declined to curtail those measures in recent years.
Resistance from within the party
The proposal faces skepticism even among Georgia Republicans.
Republican House Speaker Jon Burns of Newington said his top 2026 priority is eliminating property taxes for homeowners, not income taxes. He said he is willing to consider the Senate plan, but with conditions. “We’ve got to have the details, and it has to work,” Burns said. “We need to make sure we can continue to do vital services — health care, public safety, education, all the things we talked about.”
Gov. Brian Kemp, who is in his final year in office, has been cool to full elimination. He declined to comment Wednesday on the Senate plan. His spokesperson, Carter Chapman, said Kemp wants “to continue lowering taxes and putting more money in Georgians’ pockets as he has throughout his term.” Georgia has already lowered what was once a 6% top income tax rate to a 5.19% flat rate.
Georgia’s Democratic minority opposes the proposal, arguing it would primarily benefit high earners and deprive the state of revenue needed for public services.
A widening Republican push — with a cautionary precedent
Georgia joins a broader Republican movement. Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi and Missouri have all set goals to abolish the personal income tax, joining eight states that already levy none. Eight additional states besides Georgia are cutting personal income tax rates this year, according to the Tax Foundation.
“We’ve seen a lot of states cut their income tax rates in the last four or five years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and coming out of it,” said Aravind Boddupalli, senior researcher at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
Supporters of abolition argue it helps states attract residents and businesses, pointing to growth in Texas and Florida, which have no personal income taxes. “Your income tax is a tax on productivity,” said Manish Bhatt, who studies state taxes for the Tax Foundation. “If you are taxing productivity, you are potentially losing out on economic gains.”
Critics warn the fiscal risk is real. The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, which leans left, estimated that without an expansion of its sales tax, Georgia’s combined state and local sales tax rate would have to rise sharply from the current 7.42% to recover the revenue losses — a shift analysts say would weigh more heavily on lower-income residents than on the high earners who benefit most from income tax elimination.
The cautionary example most often cited is Kansas. After Republicans under Gov. Sam Brownback cut income taxes steeply more than a decade ago, voters revolted at the resulting budget cuts, and lawmakers imposed multiple tax increases to cover persistent shortfalls, including restoring some of the income tax cuts. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly won her first term in 2018 by framing her campaign as a referendum on Brownback’s policies.
“State income taxes are only bad if you fundamentally don’t believe that the services, the public investments that state governments provide, are worth anything,” said Matt Gardner, a senior fellow with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Missouri, where Republicans are simultaneously pursuing income tax abolition this session and considering expanding sales taxes to services to offset revenue losses, sees the Kansas outcome as a ceiling on recklessness. “We want to do this in a smart, efficient way that’s not going to have the state go off some sort of fiscal cliff,” Missouri House Majority Leader Alex Riley told the Associated Press.