Tax Day: Oklahoma Among Lowest Tax Burdens In U.S.
It’s tax day, Monday, April 15. If you’re filing taxes in Oklahoma, you have one of the lowest tax burdens in the country.
A tax burden isn’t the dollars and cents you pay the government. Instead, it’s the proportion of total income you pay toward state and local taxes.
An analysis by the media company WalletHub using Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center data shows Oklahoma has the ninth-lowest tax burden in the country.
Property tax burdens are the fourth lowest in the nation here, while the individual income tax is also in the bottom half. Sales taxes, though, are higher than in most other states.
Oklahoma’s legislature just pushed through a major sales tax cut, slashing the state’s portion of sales tax on groceries.
But a fight continues over the income tax, as some Republicans push for that tax to be cut, while the state senate has blocked those efforts.
Incoming State House Speaker Says No Special Session Needed For Budget
A state legislative leader says he’s confident budget negotiations will be successful even as a stalemate continues.
The Oklahoma Legislature is currently stuck after Senate leaders demanded the House come up with a budget plan before acting on any money bills.
Rep. Kyle Hilbert says he doesn’t think the stalemate will spill over into a special session.
“I don’t believe we’re currently on a trajectory for special session. Everything’s looking good, you know, and… this happens a lot when it comes to the budget process and sometimes there’s some disagreement, which, at the end of the day, if we agreed on everything, that would not be good government,” Hilbert said.
Hilbert is slated to replace Charles McCall as House speaker next session.
Hilbert says he wants more stable government, with more legislative leaders staying in their roles.
“We’ve had a lot of turnover as speakers, particularly in the House. Every two to three years, sometimes less, we have a new speaker. Charles McCall is the longest-serving speaker in the history of the state of Oklahoma, he’s been the longest-serving Republican speaker of the house for five years now,” Hilbert said.
That turnover has not just been among leadership. Two incumbent state G-O-P lawmakers recently announced they would not seek re-election.
Supporters To Gather Signatures To Raise Oklahoma's Minimum Wage
Supporters of raising the minimum wage can start collecting signatures Tuesday on an initiative petition to put the issue on a ballot.
Oklahoma’s minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
State Question 832 would raise it to $15 an hour incrementally by 2029. From the year 2030 on, the wage would rise each year at the same rate as the cost of living.
Supporters of the state question have 90 days collect to more than 92,000 Oklahoma voter signatures for the proposal to be put on a ballot.
This comes after unsuccessful legal challenges from the State Chamber of Oklahoma and Oklahoma Farm Bureau.
The entities asserted the proposal would violate the state constitution.
Last month, though, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court ruled that they disagreed and the initiative petition could move forward.
All signatures must be collected by mid-July.
NASA Astronaut Recalls Failed Apollo 13 Mission
This month marks the 54th anniversary of Apollo 13, the flight that was aborted for safety reasons.
NASA astronaut Fred Haise was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 13.
At the Tulsa Air and Space Museum Saturday, Haise recalled the moment he was told one oxygen tank had exploded and the other was leaking.
“I knew immediately that meant an abort and I knew we had lost the landing. So, that-I was sick to my stomach at that point. I’d done all the work to get ready and looking forward to that, and now it was gone in an instant,” Haise said.
He said he did not know if they were going to survive.
“Then I was saying ‘how the heck are we going to get back home?’ without-[if] we lose both of these tanks and lose all the power to the mothership,” Haise said.
After a tense journey, the crew made it back to Earth on April 17, 1970.
NASA Flight Director Gerry Griffin was part of the ground team that helped get Apollo 13 back home.
He said he fears the space agency is no longer a priority.
“NASA has been cut and continuing resolutions and all that really have hurt them,” Griffin said.
NASA’s next crewed mission to orbit the moon is planned for 2026.
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