by Jay Bookman, Georgia Recorder, [This article first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, republished with permission]

July 31, 2025

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones is asking Georgia voters for a big promotion, and the centerpiece of his campaign to become our next governor is a promise that many will find appealing, at least at first glance. 

The fact that the promise is also highly impractical and deeply unfair is almost beside the point, given the state of American politics these days.

According to Jones, the “Number One” thing he wants to accomplish as governor is “to completely eliminate the state income tax.”

“Tennessee and Florida have already done it,” he says, “and I’ll get it done for Georgia.”

Let’s deal first with the question of practicality. In 2026, Georgia’s income tax is projected to generate almost $20 billion, accounting for roughly half of state tax revenue. How are you going to make up a shortfall that large?

The politically easy answer would be to cut spending, but Georgia is already a low-spending state with little fat in its budget. Furthermore, with billion-dollar cuts coming in federal aid to states, state budgets across the country are going to be under major strain over the next few years, and it will be impossible to make cuts of such significance without consequences so large that it would be unacceptable even to most conservatives.

In essence, eliminating the state income tax would require raising other types of taxes, most likely the state sales tax. Next year, the current sales tax is projected to raise roughly $10 billion. To raise the additional $20 billion needed to offset the loss of income tax revenue, you’d have to triple the state sales tax. That would be deeply disruptive.

As you may note from his campaign pitch, Jones claims “Tennessee and Florida have already done it,” making it sound like it’s a recent accomplishment for those states. That’s misleading. Florida eliminated its income tax a century ago, when the world was a very different place, and Tennessee has never taxed earned income. The last state to successfully eliminate its income tax did so 45 years ago, and Alaska was able to pull it off only after construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which opened up the state’s immense oil reserves.

Georgia has no oil reserves.

Now let’s address the question of fairness.

As a rule, a sales tax is a regressive form of taxation, meaning that it hits lower and middle-income households much harder than it hits the wealthy. An income tax helps to balance out that impact, which is why most states rely on both. That’s also why Florida, with a high state sales tax but no income tax, is ranked by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy as the most regressive tax system in the country. It’s a good place to live if you’re rich, but not so great for everybody else. (Tennessee is number three in the ITEP rankings of most regressive tax systems, while Georgia ranks 33rd.)

In Florida, families with income under $20,000 a year pay 13.2% of that income in state taxes. Those in the wealthiest 1%, with income above $735,000, pay just 2.7% of their income in state taxes. The poorest Floridians end up paying an effective tax rate that is almost five times higher than the richest Floridians. The middle class is hit hard as well, paying an effective tax rate that is three or four times that of the top 1%.

I know how shocked you must be at this point to see a Republican politician such as Jones, a wealthy heir to a petroleum company, pitching a tax plan that would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy while increasing the tax burden on the rest of us in the state.

It’s particularly curious because median household income in Georgia is higher than in Florida and significantly higher than in Tennessee. We also have a higher GDP per capita than either of those neighboring states. 

So why would we want to emulate states that are doing worse than we are? 

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jill Nolin for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.