Prairie Fire May 2015: Bringing Data and Historical Perspective to Nebraska’s Tax Debate
Providing impartial research and analysis is particularly important this Nebraska legislative session with eighteen new senators, a new administration, and several other new elected officials eager for information on which to base their policy decisions. Our primary function at OpenSky Policy Institute is to bring data and facts to fiscal policy discussions. We believe lawmakers make better policy decisions when they have solid research, data, and analysis to work with. And sound policy decisions benefit us all.
Throughout this legislative session, lawmakers have been faced with a variety of tax cut proposals and a growing push to address Nebraska’s high reliance on property taxes to fund school and other key services. Compared to other states, our research shows Nebraska is second most reliant on property taxes to fund K–12 education.
As the tax debate began, we wanted to make sure lawmakers were aware of the tax reductions that already had been passed by the legislature and what impact those measures have had in our state and on our taxes today and into the future. So OpenSky released a policy brief detailing the most significant tax-cut packages of the past decade, most of which focused on income tax reductions.