04/18/24

4/18/2024

Tax bills in the Iowa Legislature have always been approved or disapproved by simple majorities. If most legislators want to raise taxes, or lower them, they do it the usual way: take a vote, up or down, and whichever side gets the most votes wins. That’s how democracy works.

But this year’s legislators want to change that. Not all of them, but most of them.

First the Iowa House late last month, and then the Iowa Senate last week, approved a proposed amendment to the Iowa Constitution that would require a two-thirds majority in each house of the Legislature to raise state income taxes. 

Changing the state’s Constitution isn’t beanbag. Proposals to do that need to be approved in exactly the same wording by two successive sessions of the Iowa Legislature, and then be submitted to the voters of the state in a statewide referendum. 

That means that this year’s proposed amendment needs approval from the Legislature in 2025 or 2026, and then approval by Iowa voters before it becomes enshrined in the Iowa Constitution. That’s a heavy lift.

But not as heavy as trying to increase the state income tax if the amendment passes.

The Iowa House is populated by 100 members, and the Iowa Senate by 50. Do the math. It would take only 34 House members, or just 17 Senators, to block a tax bill that most legislators support. 

That’s not House AND Senate members—it’s House OR Senate members. Even if, say, the House were to support an income tax increase unanimously, with all 100 members, just 17 Senators could block it. 

Amendments to the Iowa Constitution do not require the Governor’s signature. If the Legislature OKs the proposed amendment in 2025 or 2026, then it would go to the voters for their decision.

Anti-tax forces in Iowa are doggedly persistent. They’ve been trying to wedge a supermajority requirement for income tax increases into the Iowa Constitution for at least the past 25 years. Never mind how desperately the state might need more revenue at some point in the future: the Holy Grail is to assure that a legislator who opposes an increase gets to outbalance two legislators who favor it. 

That’s not democracy. Why should my Senator, and 16 others like him, theoretically be empowered to overrule 33 who see a need for an increase? And to maintain that anti-tax wall into the future forever?

Economic cycles go up and down. They always have, and Iowa doesn’t control the national economy. A time will come when the state needs more revenue than its current tax structure can provide. When that time arrives, if the Iowa Constitution prevents the Legislature from raising income taxes even for the short term, legislators will be forced to turn to the sales tax or property taxes for the necessary revenue. Neither option is preferable to the income tax in terms of individual ability to pay.

The U.S. Constitution requires only a simple majority of members of Congress to declare war. But most Iowa legislators think it should take two-thirds of their colleagues to raise  state income taxes. Does that make sense?

One more note: the proposed amendment doesn’t require a two-thirds majority to lower state income taxes. The supermajority requirement would kick in only to raise them.

In 1789, in a letter to an acquaintance following the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

For most Iowa legislators the goal appears to be the death OF taxes.