Thread by @IAmNickReynolds

An official for the University of Wyoming's Center for Business and Economic Analysis walking through their version of the tax capacity study, with estimated from the minimum rate to if we went "full socialist" and maxed everything out.

Quite a bit.

Based off median income, we have room to raise taxes.

Here's us compared to states with no income tax... we could earn $2.3 billion if we adopted the median of their tax policies.

However, Texas and Washington have major metros. We don't. S. Dakota is the best match, which would net us about $1.1b extra per year.

Wyoming also has higher incomes than SD, while being well behind their tax rates in almost every major metric.

Case: "I can't disagree that we have more tax revenues per person than probably anywhere because of this wonderful bounty of minerals. The question is, I think is where are we going."

"We're well on this trip, for the past 10 years. Very much well on this trip for the past five years that we're losing that mineral base. And with global warming, concerns about co2. It's not going to come back. So we better figure out where we're going and how we'll get there."

Where will we earn the money we need? Property taxes. We have some of the lowest levels in the country, the reason the analysis did not compare itself to Texas... Texas property taxes are quite high.

"In our view, there is capacity for Wyoming citizens to bear a higher tax burden."

The last speaker is Nick Colsch of the Wyoming Center for Business and Economic Development.

James notes most of our employees are employed by the government. So these taxes are going to support government jobs, largely. Shouldn't we cut government first, he asks?

That's the conundrum, Harshman said. Loss of government jobs could be detrimental to small communities.

Jeremiah Rieman of the WCCA says we could introduce a tax on food, eliminate the direct distribution, and put means to address food insecurity on the general fund and still have money left over.

David Fraser, of WAM, says the direct distribution has been a "life line" for some communities. But with the revenues in question every two years, he said they want a more stable source of revenue.

"It appears like it's going to get harder for you, not easier," he said.

Rieman said if Washakie County were to lose direct distribution they would lose more than 17% of your their budget. PILT? Another 17%, off of a $6 million budget.

"It would be devastating," Rieman said.

Rieman said we need about $52.5 million to pay for this distribution, he said. Note this has also been an issue for a very long time... see this article I wrote from 2019. (Couldn't find a CST link, sorry.) jhnewsandguide.com/jackson_hole_d…

Speaking of distributions... here's how we currently dole out severance taxes. (aka mineral revenues.)

Note the declines in severence tax revenues over the last few decades.

"Is this volatility? Or is that structural change?" asks Sen. Cale Case. "Just putting that out there."

Here are your federal mineral royalties distributions.