Statewide Iowa — The 2022 Iowa legislative session starts next Monday and Governor Kim Reynolds and her fellow Republicans in the House and Senate are putting tax cuts at the top of their agenda.
Majority Leader Jack Whitver of Ankeny is the top Republican in the Senate.
Whitver and Governor Reynolds say their goal is generational tax change, with their ultimate goal being the elimination of the Iowa income tax.
That’s a reference to the more than one billion dollars in the state’s Taxpayer Relief Fund. It’s the accumulation of tax payments that were way above official estimates over the past couple of years. House Speaker Pat Grassley says that money should be returned to Iowans as quickly as possible, and the plan should not pick winners and losers.
House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst of Windsor Heights says she and her fellow Democrats will release their own tax plan.
Zach Wahls of Coralville, the Democratic leader in the Iowa Senate, says Republicans wouldn’t have been able to cut taxes if the federal government hadn’t provided Iowa with a sizable amount of pandemic relief.
The official estimate for the current fiscal year indicates just over half of all the taxes paid to the State of Iowa will come from personal income taxes.
