The Wall Street Journal editorial board, in its October 27 edition, highlighted a series of measures on this November’s Texas ballot offering voters in the nation’s second most populous state the chance to approve several new taxpayer safeguards.
Among the Texas ballot measures highlighted by the WSJ editorial board is Proposition 2, which would amend the constitution to prohibit state taxation of capital gains in Texas. As the WSJ notes, Proposition 2 “is meant to spare Texas from going the way of Washington state, where Democrats enacted a 7% capital-gains tax in 2022 despite a constitutional ban on income taxes.” The WSJ points out that by approving Proposition 2 this November, “Texas voters could head off a similar tax grab.”
“Texas already has a constitutional prohibition on a state income tax, which was approved by more than 74% of the electorate in 2019,” ATR’s Patrick Gleason pointed out in an October 21 article in Forbes highlighting Proposition 2 and the other two ballot measures touted by the WSJ editorial board, namely Propositions 6 and 8, which would prohibit the institution of a financial transactions tax or a death tax in Texas.
“Lawmakers, along with policy groups, have advocated financial transaction taxes at both the federal and state level,” Gleason explained in his Forbes article published five days before the WSJ editorial on those same Texas ballot measures. “Proposition 6, if enacted in November, would ensure Texas is a financial transaction tax-free zone by amending the state constitution to bar the imposition of such a levy. Meanwhile, Proposition 8, as the ballot title notes, is a ‘constitutional amendment to prohibit the legislature from imposing death taxes applicable to a decedent’s property or the transfer of an estate, inheritance, legacy, succession, or gift.’”
In making the case for Proposition 8, the WSJ editorial board explains that the Lone Star State “doesn’t currently tax estates or inheritance, but 17 others do, including Washington with a top rate of 35%.” Voter approval of Proposition 6, the WSJ notes, “would block the enactment of nickel-and-dime fees on the Texas Stock Exchange—a Dallas-based market where trading is set to start next year—and companies such as Charles Schwab and Goldman Sachs that are expanding in the region.” The WSJ editorial board believes that enactment of these three ballot measures in November, which ATR supports, would “show popular support for ‘Y’all Street’—a moniker for Dallas-area finance—and business growth across the state.”
“Republican lawmakers drove the ballot measures, but none had less than 40% support from Democrats in the Legislature,” the editorial board added in closing. “If voters echo that bipartisan support on Election Day, coastal states will get three more reasons to shape up and compete.”