Iowa voters will decide in November whether to approve a constitutional amendment that would require two-thirds of the members of the Iowa House and Senate to approve future increases in Iowa income taxes.
Two groups have unveiled websites as part of what both describe as part of educational campaigns about the proposal. “We have a website — www.maketaxhikesharder.com — and it is exactly as it sounds,” said Iowans for Tax Relief President Chris Hagenow. “We want Iowans to understand that this amendment is on tbeir ballot this fall.”
A coalition of 10 groups that oppose the amendment have created their own website — www.voteNOIowa.info. Anne Discher of Common Good Iowa said the amendment will not make it harder to raise other taxes, like the sales tax, property taxes or the gas tax. “The only way I can understand that they’re picking up these two taxes — the corporate income tax and the personal income tax — is those are the two taxes that can be structured to ask the wealthy and profitable corporations to pay their fair share.”
Sixteen states, including California, require some sort of a supermajority for raising or imposing taxes. Hagenow said that shows requiring a higher vote tally doesn’t make it impossible to raise income taxes. “But it does make it a last resort,” Hagenow said, “and it does make it something that’s going to require a consensus among our elected officials rather than a simple majority.”
The proposed supermajority threshold means 67 of the 100 members of the Iowa House and 34 of the 50 state senators would have to agree to raise income taxes. Joshua Brown, a middle school teacher who’s President of the Iowa State Education Association, said the amendment would make it harder to fix a broken state budget. “Iowa is spending more than it takes in by over $1 billion two years running. That gap only gets closed one of two ways: you raise revenue or you cut something,” Brown said. “Amendment 1 takes one of those options and makes it nearly impossible.”
Iowans for Tax Relief is planning a paid media campaign in support of the amendment. The coalition that opposes the amendment has yard signs to distribute and a strategy to spread their message online. Paid advertising is “a stretch goal,” according to Discher.
