Kansas ranks 23rd on tax competitiveness. In a race where people vote with their feet, that is not something to be proud of.
Texas has no personal income tax. Florida has no personal income tax. Tennessee eliminated its tax on investment income. North Carolina has spent years cutting rates and climbing the State Tax Competitiveness Index.
And Kansas ranks 23rd overall, according to the recent release of the Tax Foundation’s Facts & Figures 2026. That is not a compliment. It is a warning.
Kansas is not competing against poorly run states. It is losing in the competition against the states where people are moving to.
According to IRS domestic migration data, Kansas continues to lose residents and income to faster-growing states. Kansans are not speculating about which states offer better opportunities. They are acting on it.
The tax structure helps explain the exodus. Kansas ranks 26th on corporate taxes, 28th on individual income taxes, 21st on sales taxes, and 26th on property taxes, based on the Tax Foundation’s state tax rankings. Its one strong component, unemployment insurance taxes, does nothing to attract workers or businesses. Every category that drives investment and growth sits in the bottom half.
The individual income tax is the clearest self-inflicted wound. A 28th-place ranking means Kansas is still penalizing work, savings, and entrepreneurship more than it should in an economy where people and businesses can relocate freely.
Sales taxes compound it. Kansas carries a 6.50 percent state rate, the 9th highest in the country, and a combined state and local average of 8.78 percent, according to the Tax Foundation’s sales tax data. That burden falls directly on consumers and hits border communities hardest, especially when Missouri’s rate is lower at 8.44 percent (ranking 12th highest). Lawmakers can talk about affordability, but Kansans see the difference every time they cross a state line to shop.
Property taxes pile on further. An effective rate of roughly 1.19 percent on owner-occupied housing adds one more layer to a system that keeps stacking taxes instead of simplifying them, based on Tax Foundation Kansas data. Homeowners, farmers, and small businesses feel the cumulative weight even when no single rate looks extreme in isolation.
On the corporate side, Kansas runs a 4 percent base rate plus a 3 percent surcharge, creating a 7 percent top rate, as shown in the Tax Foundation’s corporate tax tables. The 26th-place ranking reflects it. Other states have been lowering rates and broadening bases for years. Kansas has not kept pace.
Kansas lawmakers should already know the deeper lesson here. The state tried tax reform before without controlling spending. It unraveled. The lesson was never that tax relief fails. It is that tax reform without spending discipline fails.
According to the Kansas Policy Institute’s 2025 Green Book (the new version is literally at the printers!), Kansas governments collect more than $6,300 per resident. That level of spending requires higher taxes, and higher taxes cost Kansas residents and businesses it cannot afford to lose.
Every surplus spent by a government official instead of returned to taxpayers is a reform deferred. Every year of middling rankings is another year of slow, compounding loss.
Kansas lawmakers say they want growth. The path is not complicated. Cut the size of government. Reduce reliance on income taxes. Lower the overall burden enough to compete with states that are actually winning.
Other states are not waiting. Kansas lawmakers are. And Kansans are leaving.
