02/12/26

2/12/2026

Standard majority rule now governs state income tax decisions in Iowa. The state’s constitution requires that five procedural steps be taken to change that. Three of those steps have already been taken.

In 2024 the Iowa House and the Iowa Senate both approved a resolution to amend the state constitution, to require a two-thirds vote in each house in order to increase state income taxes. 

The resolution also would change the constitution to require an identical “flat tax” rate on income taxes paid by all Iowans, regardless of their income. The Constitution henceforth would require someone earning, say, $30,000 a year to pay the same percentage income tax rate as someone earning $1,000,000 a year. 

The 2024 House and Senate votes constituted two of the five steps necessary to replace majority rule on income tax decisions with a two-thirds requirement. When the Iowa Senate in 2025 approved the resolution again, in exactly the same language, that was the third step.

All that’s left now for the anti-taxers to achieve their two-thirds requirement is for the Iowa House to pass the resolution again during the year 2026, and then for Iowans themselves to approve the constitutional amendment in a public referendum. The Governor has no official role in the state’s constitutional amendment procedure.

If the amendment were approved, simple math reveals that all that would be necessary to prevent a state income tax increase in Iowa would be for 17 of the 50 Iowa state senators, or 34 of the 100 Iowa House members, to vote “no.” Even if two-thirds of one house favored an increase, one-third plus one member of the other House could block it.

It’s simply undemocratic for one senator, or one representative, to wield the same power as two others when it comes to increasing state income taxes. And even more disturbing, the same would not be true for reducing income taxes; that could be done by simple majority. A 51 percent vote, as opposed to a 67 percent one.

The votes in the Iowa Legislature on the resolution have been strictly party line: all “yes” votes have been by Republicans, and all “no” votes have been by Democrats.

The two-thirds requirement would be ill-advised in any situation, in my judgment. It’s not the way democracy in America has operated.

But right now, on this issue, it is especially inappropriate. The Iowa budget currently has about a $900 million shortfall, with expenditures outstripping revenues. Governor Reynolds’ proposed budget for fiscal year 2026-27 calls for expenditures to exceed revenues by $1.1 billion. The state has been dipping into its full reserve coffers to cover the red ink, and can probably do that for another one or two years. 

However, at a time when the state’s prime economic base—agriculture—continues in the doldrums, with not much optimism for an upswing in the foreseeable future, state revenue predictions are shaky at best. Iowa’s economic growth lags nearly all the other states right now. 

And the Legislature has made property tax reduction its Number One priority for this year’s session. With that in mind, if the state’s economy remains anemic, putting income tax increases realistically out of reach seems just weird. And the state can do little about the national economic cycle and its effect on Iowa’s economic lethargy.

Even more budget danger: the state this year will be paying out some $300 million for education savings accounts for parents to send their children to private schools. Those payments have no income requirement: they’re available equally to the wealthy and those of modest incomes. 

At the same time, an Iowa Senate subcommittee has advanced a bill to increase state supplemental aid (public preK-12 school appropriations) only 1.75 percent for the 2026-27 fiscal year, an amount that doesn’t come close to the increased costs that schools face.

If income taxes and property taxes are off the table as potential sources of more government revenues, sales taxes would be the only remaining resource. Higher sales taxes would weigh heavier on people of smaller incomes than on the well-to-do. Doesn’t seem fair.

Given all these red flags, it’s strange that the proposed constitutional amendment has remained pretty much under the radar for Iowa voters. I don’t know when the Iowa House expects to act the second time on the resolution for the amendment, but I’m sure the Republican leadership there plans to do so before legislative adjournment. Given the overwhelming Republican majority in the House, passage of the resolution is all but assured.

That would leave only the people of Iowa to make their “yes or no” decision on the amendment. Simple majority approval in the public referendum would seal the change. 

Iowans have been understandably cautious in recent decades about amending their constitution. Once something is in that document, it’s almost always there for all time. 

The proposal to make it tougher for the Legislature to increase income taxes is one that the state’s voters would be wise to reject. A “no” vote would be in keeping with Iowans’ sound conservative judgment on economic matters. ♦