Don't be gaslit into believing Iowa's constitutional amendment debate is over

We've heard this before

Photo by Camilo Rueda Lopez on Unsplash

The campaign to change the rules on how the state of Iowa raises tax revenues kicked off last week, and the message from the special interests is clear: Don’t resist. You can’t win.

Iowans for Tax Relief convened reporters to pitch the plan to amend the state Constitution to lock in recent Republican tax policies. In the process, the group touted a new poll that reportedly shows 74% of likely voters would approve the amendment.

Don’t believe it. Look at the poll closely. It asks whether people would support requiring a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature for “any tax increase.” But that’s not what the amendment says. Amendment 1, as it’s being called, would require a supermajority to raise just some taxes, specifically the kind that affect the wealthy the most: individual and corporate income tax rates.

At the same time, the amendment intentionally excludes the sales tax, which takes a bigger chunk out of the pockets of poor and middle-income Iowans. Only a simple majority would be needed for the Legislature to increase the sales tax and other consumption taxes, like the tax on gasoline.

I can understand why supporters of this plan would tout a poll like this. If Iowans can be convinced this question has already been decided, they might just tune out the debate altogether.

Maybe even the other side will surrender before the fight truly begins.

This happened in 1999, too.

Back then, Iowans for Tax Relief backed a constitutional amendment to require a 60% supermajority in the Legislature to raise income or sales tax rates and touted a poll that claimed 71% of Iowans supported their plan. But the other side didn’t give up. Unions, church and social services groups and neighborhood organizations opposed the plan because they were afraid it would raise property taxes, hurt their schools and handcuff the state in case of an economic emergency.

The amendment was defeated.

Supporters of this new amendment don’t want a repeat. They don’t want you to think about the sales tax and other consumption taxes that inevitably will rise if this amendment passes.

They want you to think this fight is already over.

I don’t think it is. Iowans, like all Americans, want lower taxes. But they also believe everybody should pay their fair share. And they instinctively know the rich aren’t doing their part.

This is especially true in Iowa. In 2018, the Institute on Taxation and Economy Policy published a report finding middle-income families paid a higher share of their incomes in state and local taxes in Iowa than the richest 1%. The richest Iowans paid 7.2%. Middle-income Iowans paid 10.5%.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has endorsed Amendment 1 (Photo: Screengrab of Iowa PBS broadcast.)

It’s even worse now. A few years ago, GOP lawmakers passed a flat income tax that gave the richest Iowans an average tax cut of $67,000 a year. Now, they want to lock in that gift. This constitutional amendment would stop even a majority of lawmakers from reversing this mistake and make it inevitable the sales tax will rise to make up for the revenues the state is now losing because of it.

Why do I think this? Because that’s what they’ve been doing for 40-plus years. Whenever the state needs money, lawmakers raise the sales tax. It’s easier for them to do this because sales taxes are less visible to people. They get tacked on to purchases a little bit at a time, which makes it difficult to see the total cost over a year. But that cost has been rising on Iowans for decades.

When I graduated from Center Point High School in 1980, the sales tax was 3%. Now, it has more than doubled, to 7%, in most parts of Iowa. They’ve even expanded the tax to include more services.

The top income tax rate, on the other hand, has been slashed by more than 70% since then. This has been a huge gift to the wealthy.

Politicians like Kim Reynolds and Zach Lahn have said they want to go further and get rid of income taxes. Well, the state raised $4.5 billion in net individual and corporate income taxes in 2025, and it collected a similar amount in sales/use taxes. Eliminate one and the other will inevitably soar.

This amendment isn’t about keeping taxes down. It’s about keeping some taxes down; the kind that affects the rich and corporations the most. Backers of this plan think this trickle-down economics will help the state grow. But it hasn’t worked. Just look at Iowa’s economy since the Republican flat tax was passed. We’re worse off.

All this new amendment would do is set the table for a future sales tax increase.

Someday, Iowa will need more money. The question is, who will pay? The rich or the rest of us?

Supporters of changing the Constitution kicked off their campaign last week. They want you to believe this fight is already over.

Only you can decide whether it really is.

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