These are people of the land – the common clay of the new west. You know…morons. –The Waco Kid
Disclosure time: I have made two $50.00 bets that Amendment 5 – the murder of the Missouri individual Income Tax – will pass, receiving better than 60% of the vote.
I made those bets before the used car selling governor placed the income tax proposal on the less popular August primary ballot. Mike Kehoe’s decision to place four of the nine probable measures on Primary day substantially ups the chance that they will pass.
As a quick reminder, on Tuesday, August 4, 2026, Missourians will decide…
Amendment 1 Continuing the decades old small sales tax for water and soil conservation efforts.
Amendment 2 Requiring all counties – including Jackson County, Missouri – to have elected tax assessors.
Amendment 4 Requiring citizen-proposed ballot items to pass in every one of Missouri’s Congressional Districts to become law.
Amendment 5 Eliminating the individual income tax and replacing it with higher and more expansive sales and other taxes. Plus, suspending existing state Constitution restrictions on taxation for five years.
Obviously, Amendment 4 pretty much destroys the ability of any initiative petition proposal to become law. Opponents merely need to concentrate on one Congressional District with a bucketful of mistruths and innuendo to yield one more “no” vote than the “yes” votes to prevail. That makes victories for common sense as likely as climbing Mount Everest in board shorts and flip flops.
Now, the vast majority of Missourians do not read a daily newspaper. All of the state’s commercial television stations are owned by groups with MAGA credentials. AM radio about Missouri features commentators who make the late Rush Limbaugh appear moderate and the most common thing in the rural weekly papers are columns supplied by Republican members of the General Assembly and Congress.
So, forget the always mythical “liberal media” or even non-partisan outlets such as National Public Radio stations providing balanced, detailed coverage of the impacts of Amendment 5. Most of the small portion of voters who vote in the Primary will probably only see the official Ballot Summary for the proposal or hear about it from GOP sources.
“Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to:
● Phase-out the individual income tax based on revenue growth;
● Reduce personal property and other local taxes when local revenues increase;
● Modify the sales and use tax to eliminate income tax and reduce local taxes; and
● Protect local funding for public schools and other purposes?”
If voters at the Polling Place want to learn more, they can read the full proposal text taped to the wall. That won’t tell them much, alas, because the legislature purposely kept that language vague. And they brazenly pushed implementation of the income tax murder offsets onto future legislators.
Quite simply, the majority of elected officials charged with replacing billions of dollars a year in revenue may not yet have even decided to run for office.
Here’s my prediction: the future Representatives and Senators will not replace all the lost revenue. They will replace some of the money (perhaps two-thirds) and simply cut education, health care and other services to balance the books. (Yes, that will be horrible.)
Time to charge the windmills.
Yes, the battle will be lost. It remains critical that we fight, that we do all that we can to let our neighbors know the devastating impacts of severe cuts to state services. Savings aren’t real if they merely shift the costs to local governments or citizens. We need to create a record of our fears and warnings.
Even if they don’t listen nor act intelligently now, we can expect that “the public” will later regret what the legislature did to them. That happened in Kansas when they drank the Kool Aid. They learned. They changed.
Let’s hope Missourians learn too from their coming mistake.
Glenn Koenen