Huge Savings!
Today the Oklahoma House moved to fulfill the Governor’s request for yet another personal tax cut. For those who haven’t noticed - and that’s most of us - Oklahoma Taxpayers already received a personal income tax cut this year. The top tax rate in Oklahoma went from 5% to 4.75% beginning January 1, 2020. The reason we didn’t notice is that the effect for most of us is so small.
So follow along with me… According to the 2020 US Census, the median household income in Oklahoma is just $53,840 per year. (Remember, we’re basically #TopTen in poverty.) “Median” means half of all households make more than $53,840 — and sadly, half make less.
This morning, I pointed out to my colleagues that an Oklahoma family of 4 (mom, dad, 2 kids) making $53,840 will only gain about $10 per month from this tax cut. How did I figure this out? Well, I plugged the numbers into Forbes Magazine’s Oklahoma Tax Estimator. Then I took that Oklahoma Tax and calculated the effect of the additional 0.25% cut. (It’s basically a cut of 1/19th.)
When you do the math, it comes out to just about $120 per year — or $10 per month for that struggling family of 4.
I guess this is just as “historic and transformative” as the Governor’s aMaZiNg education changes we made last year. 🤷♂️
Hey! It’s $10 bucks!
Now I’ll be the first to admit, ten bucks is ten bucks. Right? After all, what could you do with an extra $10 of inflation relief each month? Let’s see…
Buy 2 gallons of gas?
Buy 1 movie ticket?
Buy a “Winchester Burger” at Swadley’s Foggy Bottom? (If you want fries, that’s $4 extra.)
Buffet pizza lunch at my favorite pizza place, Luigis - in Del City, of course!
Feeling relieved? It’s not much for a struggling family, right? On the other hand, when you put together all those $10 bills from across the entire state, you’d be surprised at what it adds up to. It’s about $225 million each year!
So what can the state do with $225 million dollars?
Here are some numbers for comparison purposes. These numbers come directly from this year’s state appropriations bill, SB 1040.
Just 3 agencies - and I think we would all agree these are important agencies. Who thinks this farm state can get rid of our Department of Agriculture? Does anyone think we should get rid of our courts?
Here’s another list of smaller, but also important agencies.
Note: The entry for new textbooks is the cost to replace textbooks statewide for a single subject. The cost ranges from about $45-65M each year, depending on which subject needs to be replaced.
As you can see, we all get a lot of value for our 10 bucks. When we work together, we can build a better Oklahoma.
