![]() Beyond obvious barriers to equity, such as the struggle for basic civil rights and obstacles that keep people of color from participating equally in fundamental arenas of American society such as the housing market, tax policy decisions at the state level have played a unique role in helping to enrich white Georgians and corporate interests, while placing an unequal burden on Black Georgians and people of color. Introductionįor much of Georgia’s history, public policy has helped to create and widen disparities across income and wealth between white Georgians and people of color, with Black Georgians in particular enduring systematic and state-sanctioned subjugation and unequal treatment from the state’s founding through the modern era. When our state does not have adequate revenues, the underfunding of state programs exacerbates inequities faced by people of color and Georgians with low incomes. Education and health care, for example, need an equitable and adequate tax and revenue system in order to meet the needs of the state’s people. In enacting these forward-looking reforms, state leaders must understand how tax and revenue measures also serve as fundamental components of other core policy areas. These policies should include strong support for low- to middle-income Georgians, more fairly tax areas of the economy dominated by wealthy residents and corporations and ensure that the wealthiest and corporations pay a greater share to finance government programs and services that reflects their ability to contribute to state government. Going forward, Georgia should begin to address the state’s income and wealth gap by enacting robust antiracist, equitable and inclusive policies to support economic opportunity for all Georgians by dismantling racial, ethnic, gender and economic inequities and through strengthening state revenues to improve the quality and efficacy of core government programs and services. Although Georgia’s tax laws no longer explicitly mention race or ethnicity, state fiscal policy is not neutral with respect to how Georgians of different races fare when calculating the amount and type of taxes paid, or the ways those tax dollars are ultimately used by government. ![]() The structure of Georgia’s revenue system-which primarily relies on the personal income tax and sales and use tax-remains extremely outdated. Executive Summaryįrom the 18th century to the present day, state taxation policies have regularly contributed to worsening income inequality, with the bulk of tax and revenue measures enacted from the Great Recession of 2009 to the present day (2021) also primarily benefitting wealthy interests and corporations while harming the state’s lowest-income residents, who are most likely to be people of color. You can download the Reimagining Revenue fact sheet here. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |