MUST READ: The Minority Report From The Tax Credit Review Commission
I had been skeptical that reviving Missouri's Tax Credit Review Commission would accomplish much because the state already knew its tax-credit system needed reform. The commission's new recommendations were worse than that low expectation: they proposed a less aggressive approach than the body had taken in 2010, even as the fiscal burden of credits had continued to grow.
The more encouraging development came from a minority of eight commission members. Building in part on Craig Van Matre's draft work, they issued a forceful minority report that drew on free-market thinkers including Friedrich Hayek and Henry Hazlitt and confronted Missouri's tax-credit problems much more directly.
It would have been a meaningful advance if the commission as a whole had embraced that analysis. Instead, the majority moved toward preserving more of the existing tax-credit structure. The minority report therefore deserves attention as the stronger reform document and as evidence that some members understood the scale of the problem.
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