By Kurt Erickson
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
(TNS)
JEFFERSON CITY — Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe’s bid to replace the state’s income tax with sales and use taxes ran into a wall of opposition from some of the state’s major lobbying groups Wednesday.
In the first public hearing of the governor’s tax swap plan, House Speaker Jon Patterson outlined a proposed constitutional amendment to members of the House Commerce Committee urging Missouri voters in November to lift a prohibition on the expansion of sales and use taxes.
If approved, House Joint Resolution 174 would give Missouri lawmakers a green light to begin a phaseout of the state’s 4.7% income tax rate.
“This is the first step in a long, methodical process,” said Patterson, R-Lee’s Summit.
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Organizations representing seniors, attorneys and real estate agents, however, warned the plan will raise the cost of goods and services for low-income Missourians.
“It might even price people out of the (housing) market in Missouri,” said Missouri Association of Realtors lobbyist Jason Zamkus.
The American Association of Retired Persons, representing 750,000 members, also weighed in, saying the proposal would raise prices for seniors, many of whom do not pay income taxes on their Social Security checks.
The proposal asks voters to grant lawmakers broad authority to expand the state’s 4.2% sales tax rate to currently untaxed goods and services. Services such as accounting fees for tax preparation or software subscriptions currently are not taxed; goods exempted from the sales tax include prescription drugs and home utilities.
While the governor pledged in his State of the State address earlier this month that any new sales taxes would not apply to “agriculture, health care or real estate,” the measure put forth by House leadership contains no such exemptions and would override an existing ban on taxing real estate transactions.
The proposal also would require local governments to lower their own sales tax rates to offset any increase in revenue from the broader sales tax base.
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© 2026 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Visit www.stltoday.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
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