After cutting Arkansas’s top income tax rates for individuals and corporations less than six months ago, Gov. Sarah Sanders and Republican legislators now hope to give yet more tax relief to companies and well-off Arkansans before the end of the year.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Mike Wickline reported this morning that GOP leaders are mulling the prospect of a special legislative session as soon as September. The details are still in flux, but legislators are considering cuts to both the state’s top individual income tax rate and its top corporate income rate of somewhere between 0.2% and 0.4%, Wickline reported.
Sanders signed a bill this spring that cut the top individual rate from 4.9% to 4.7% and the top corporate rate from 5.3% to 5.1%. But that was just the latest in a decade-long series of cuts spearheaded by former Gov. Asa Hutchinson and legislative Republicans. Though some of Hutchinson’s earlier tax cuts helped lower- or middle-income Arkansans, most of the benefits of the cuts over the years have accrued to those at the top of the income ladder.
In 2019, the top income tax rate stood at 6.9%. By the time Hutchinson left office, he’d cut it to 4.9%. Now, the legislature is poised to slash it down to 4.5% or 4.3%. Sanders may not have much use for her predecessor in many regards, but the one thing almost all Republicans seem to agree on is tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the well-off.
