Georgia Republicans moved this week to end the state’s personal income tax by 2032, setting off a debate about how a zero-income-tax plan would be paid for and what it could mean for public services. The push began with Republican leaders in the Senate backing a proposal to zero out Georgia’s personal income tax by 2032, even as Democrats argued the cuts would mostly benefit high earners and leave the state short on funds for programs.
Georgia’s personal income tax is projected to collect about $16.5 billion this year, accounting for 44% of the state’s general revenue, according to the report. The push is being driven by politics, with Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who leads the state Senate, making income-tax elimination a centerpiece of his 2026 campaign for governor. State Sen. Blake Tillery, who led a committee to abolish the tax and is among candidates to succeed Jones as lieutenant governor, called the measure a first step toward affordability.
“This is the first vote that we are going to get to take to address affordability,” Tillery said. The proposal’s path is still uncertain, with House Republicans expressing different priorities and a preference in some cases for cutting the tax in smaller steps. Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns said Wednesday that his big 2026 goal is eliminating property taxes for homeowners and that he is willing to consider the Senate plan.
Burns also said he is “open” to any plan that benefits Georgians, but warned lawmakers they still need details and assurances it will not undermine essential programs. “But we’ve got to have the details, and it has to work,” Burns said, adding, “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, in his last year serving, declined to comment Wednesday on the Senate plan. Kemp’s spokesperson Carter Chapman said Kemp wants “to continue lowering taxes and putting more money in Georgians’ pockets as he has throughout his term.” Democrats’ minority in the legislature opposes the move, saying it would mostly benefit high earners and that the state needs revenue to provide services.
The debate in Georgia comes as multiple Republican-led states pursue income-tax cuts. Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi and Missouri have set goals to abolish the personal income tax, joining eight other states besides Georgia that are cutting personal income tax rates this year, according to the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., group generally skeptical of higher taxes. Aravind Boddupalli, a senior researcher at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said states have been cutting income-tax rates over recent years, including during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“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,” Boddupalli said. Supporters argue that tax cuts can make states more attractive for residents and businesses, pointing to growth in Texas and Florida, which do not levy a personal income tax. Manish Bhatt, who studies state taxes for the Tax Foundation, said an income tax can discourage productivity.
“Your income tax is a tax on productivity,” Bhatt said. The Georgia proposal also builds on prior state tax changes: Georgia already has lowered its top personal income tax rate from 6% to a 5.19% flat rate. Republicans backing further reductions support a cut to 4.99% this year for individual and corporate taxpayers, which the report estimated at $800 million in foregone revenue.
Under the Senate plan, the corporate rate would be frozen while the focus shifts to individual tax cuts. The plan would propose in 2027 exempting the first $50,000 of income for a single person and $100,000 for a married couple, up from $12,000 and $24,000 now, and the report said the combination of the initial rate cut and the exemption proposal would lower Georgia revenue by $3.8 billion in the 2027 budget year. Tillery argued the benefits would come first to families with lower incomes, and he said it “gives benefits first to hardworking families.”
The report said Tillery argued the state could pay by using surplus tax revenue and shifting back to paying for capital expenditures through borrowing instead of cash, but that those approaches likely would not cover the foregone revenue even in the first year, much less $13 billion more in cuts needed to reach zero. Tillery said revenue should be bolstered by trimming business income and sales tax breaks, saying legislators should reduce “corporate welfare,” but the report said lawmakers and Kemp have balked at curtailing those measures in recent years.
Critics point to other states where income-tax cuts led to difficult budget tradeoffs. In Kansas, voters revolted after Republicans under Gov. Sam Brownback cut income taxes steeply more than a decade ago, and lawmakers imposed multiple tax increases to cover persistent budget shortfalls, including restoring some income tax cuts. Matt Gardner, a senior fellow with the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said state income taxes can be justified if lawmakers believe in the value of government services.
“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,” Gardner said. In Missouri, Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe and GOP legislative leaders made phasing out the state’s income tax a top priority for the session starting Wednesday, and they are looking to expand sales taxes to services that are currently untaxed to offset lost revenue.
“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,” Alex Riley, Missouri House Majority Leader, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The report said expanding sales taxes could fall more heavily on poorer taxpayers and noted that the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute estimated that without sales-tax expansion, Georgia’s combined state and local sales tax rate would have to rise sharply from the current 7.42% to recover revenue losses.
Against that backdrop, Georgia lawmakers face the question of what the Senate plan would require in practice and whether enough support can be gathered to move from partial cuts to a full elimination. Burns said he wants the income-tax plan to “work” and to ensure Georgia can continue “vital services” including health care, public safety and education.