House Bill 413 Creates Greater Accountability and Transparency for Tax Expenditures
HB 413, sponsored by Representative James Tipton, is a good government bill that establishes a structure for the General Assembly...
Our Commonwealth: A Primer on the Kentucky State Budget
Click here for: A Primer on the Kentucky State Budget (PDF). Every two years, the Kentucky General Assembly passes a budget in the form of four separate bills for the...
Forecast Confirms Weak Revenue Growth for Next Budget
The official body charged with predicting revenues for the state budget met yesterday and confirmed a weak revenue forecast for the next two years — meaning more budget cuts are...
Slot Machines Multiplying Rapidly Across Kentucky While State Deeply Undertaxes Them
Betting using instant wagering machines, which resemble and operate similar to slot machines, has exploded across Kentucky and thousands more machines will come online in the near future. Yet the...
Why Are Many Kentucky Jails So Crowded?
Over the past few months, Kentucky’s severely overcrowded jails have been in the spotlight. While other states have enacted significant criminal justice reforms, reducing their prison and jail populations without...
Troubling Revenue Picture Emerges Due to Recent Tax Cuts
Last week, the Consensus Forecasting Group (CFG), the official body charged with forecasting revenue for the commonwealth, met to determine planning revenue estimates for the current and next four fiscal...
Year End Revenues Are Above Projections, But Concerns Remain for the Future
Kentucky ended the 2019 fiscal year with $194.5 million more in the General Fund than was expected based on the revenue estimate – a 1.7% increase compared to the official...
Further Shift from the Income Tax to the Sales Tax is Bad for Kentucky
In interviews leading up to the 2020 session, legislative leaders have expressed their desire to continue down the path of reducing income taxes and paying for the reductions by relying...
Taxing Betting Uniformly Would Generate Much-Needed General Fund Revenue
The 145th running of the Kentucky Derby was over quickly, but the revenue losses from Kentucky’s failure to uniformly tax betting already happening in the state — and to dedicate...
2019 Session Tax Round Up – More Special Interest Tax Cuts Means Less To Invest
The Kentucky General Assembly ended the 2019 session with the passage of a pair of so-called tax "clean up” bills that make Kentucky’s precarious revenue situation worse. The first bill,...