Kansas Lawmakers Rewrite Plan for Boosting Taxes

Kansas legislators have rewritten parts of their latest plan for raising taxes to fix the state budget and provide additional dollars for public schools.

House and Senate negotiators agreed Wednesday on a revised plan that would raise $953 million over two years by increasing income taxes, boosting liquor taxes and imposing the state’s sales tax on a few services.

The House planned to debate the plan Wednesday afternoon and then take up a measure that would phase in a $280 million increase in spending on public schools over two years.

House negotiators on tax issues wanted the tax plan to pledge to drop the 6.5 percent sales tax on food to 5.5 percent in July 2020 in an effort to make the new taxes on services easier to sell.]