Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R), like Republican governors all across the country, aims to implement a regressive tax plan that involves cutting income taxes for the rich while, in his case, maintaining a sales tax hike that primarily hurts the poor. The sales tax increase was supposed to be temporary when it was adopted in 2010, but Brownback now wants to make permanent.

Sales taxes disproportionately impact the poor, who are more likely to spend all or most of their income. According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Brownback’s plan will raise taxes on the poorest Kansans, but still lose hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue due to huge tax cuts for the rich:

– The poorest 20 percent of Kansas taxpayers would pay 0.2 percent more of their income in taxes each year, or an average increase of $22.

– The middle 20 percent of Kansas taxpayers would pay 0.2 percent less of their income in taxes each year, or an average cut of $104.

– Upper-income families, by contrast, reap the greatest benefit with the richest one percent of Kansans, those with an average income of over a million dollars, saving an average of $6,528 a year.

The plan would cost the state $340 million in revenue, despite hiking taxes the poor. And Kansas already has a regressive tax system, with the poorest residents paying a rate more than twice as high as the richest 1 percent.

The poorest Americans are subject to a tax rate at the state and local level that is twice as high as the tax rate paid by the wealthiest earners thanks to “fundamentally unfair” state tax laws, according to a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). Middle-class taxpayers also pay higher effective rates than the wealthy.

When state, local, property, and sales taxes are taken into account, the poorest 20 percent of Americans pay an average effective tax rate of 11.1 percent, the report found. The middle 20 percent pays a 9.4 percent rate, while the rate for the top 1 percent is just 5.6 percent. The lack of progressive income taxes and an over-reliance on consumption taxes are the primary culprit, the report says.

In the 10 most regressive states, the poorest 20 percent pay a rate as much as six times as high as the rate for the richest 1 percent. Four of those states — Washington, Texas, Florida, and South Dakota — have no income tax; one, Tennessee, has a limited income tax that only applies to dividends and interest. In these five states, half to two-thirds of revenue comes from sales and excise taxes, well above the national average of one-third.

Still, Republicans across the country are pushing tax plans that would replace income taxes — typically the only form of progressive taxation at the state level — with sales taxes. Republicans in Nebraska, Kansas, North Carolina, and Louisiana have advanced such plans, even though their state tax systems are already regressive.

In Louisiana, worst of the four, the poorest 20 percent pay 9.2 percent of their income in sales taxes, while the wealthiest 1 percent pay just 1.3 percent. Even in North Carolina, the best of the four, the poor pay six times as much of their income in sales taxes as the richest one percent. Shifting to a tax code that relies solely on sales taxes would make these states even worse.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) became the latest Republican to propose the elimination of state income taxes during his State of the State address last night, adding that he would make up lost revenue by maintaining what was supposed to be a temporary increase in the state’s sales tax. Republican governors in Louisiana and Nebraska, along with GOP lawmakers in North Carolina, have also proposed replacing their state’s income taxes with increased sales taxes, a regressive plan that will raise taxes on the poor while cutting them for the wealthy.

Brownback proposed an initial cut to the state income tax, which he wants to eventually eliminate altogether, the Kansas City Star reports:

Amid the depths of the recession, legislators approved a 1-cent increase in the state sales tax in 2010. That was to be a temporary boost, with six-tenths of a cent scheduled to go away this summer on the expectation that other revenue would trickle in with an improving economy.

Now Brownback suggests rethinking the sales-tax rollback.

He wants to use it as a lever to further reduce income tax rates, piling on more cuts to those passed by the Legislature last year. Brownback wants to lower the rate in the highest income tax bracket to 3.5 percent from 4.9 percent. The rate for the lowest bracket would drop to 1.9 percent from 3 percent.

In 2012, Brownback signed a massive tax cut for the wealthy into law over the objections of Democrats and even some Republicans. That plan, which initially included provisions that would hammer the poor, would reduce state revenues by $800 million by 2014, according to the Kansas Legislative Research Department, and would likely lead to rollbacks in funding for schools and other vital programs. The plan made Kansas’ already-regressive tax code — the poorest 20 percent pay 9 percent of their income in taxes compared to less than 6 percent for the top 1 percent of earners — even more regressive. This proposal would make it even worse.

Replacing income taxes with sales taxes has become a cause du jour of Republican governors and state legislators, who are being urged to take such action by groups like Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and Americans for Prosperity, the anti-tax group founded by the Koch brothers. In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R) plan would give the wealthy a tax cut while raising taxes on the bottom 80 percent of residents, while in Nebraska, the plan could mean a tax cut for the rich at the expense of tax breaks that benefit the poor.