Paul Davis on taxes: the Brownback cuts and the 2017 federal law

2014: the Kansas income tax cuts

In 2012 Kansas sharply cut income taxes, and Brownback predicted the cuts would work like "an adrenaline shot to the heart" of the economy. Davis campaigned against them. On June 30, 2014, he proposed holding income tax rates at their current level, which would delay the further rate cuts and deduction changes scheduled under a 2013 law, until school funding returned to pre-recession levels. He did not propose repealing the 2013 cuts. He also called for a bipartisan commission to study "accountability measures within the tax code and targeted incentives for job growth," and for steps to ease local property taxes, which he said had risen as state aid fell.

By September he was calling the 2012 changes a "tax experiment that would set our state on a path to bankruptcy." One of his best-known ads showed a car driving in reverse; the Christian Science Monitor included it in its list of the year's catchiest ads.

The other side. Brownback said economic growth would prevent the shortfall Davis projected. The Lawrence Journal-World noted that Davis did not offer a specific plan to close it. An August 2014 Republican Governors Association ad said "name the tax or fee, and Paul Davis probably voted to hike it," and accused him of backing the largest single tax increase in state history.

2017-2018: the federal tax law

Launching his congressional campaign on August 15, 2017, Davis agreed the federal tax code needed an overhaul but said Republicans wanted to "pull the Brownback tax experiment out of Kansas' dumpster." In August 2018 he criticized the federal tax cuts that had passed in December 2017, comparing them to the Kansas cuts, though he said Congress was unlikely to reverse them soon. At the October 3, 2018 forum in Independence he tied rising deficits to the new law.

His campaign's first 2018 TV ad promised tax reform that would help working families and said he had voted more than 150 times to cut taxes as a legislator. That count comes from the campaign; we have not verified it.

The other side. In the October 22, 2018 debate Watkins said Davis "likes tax hikes, abortions and higher spending." His campaign said voters wanted lower taxes. The Kansas Policy Institute's Kansas Freedom Index, which scores votes from a free-market view, gave Davis 36 percent in 2013.