ATLANTA — The state Senate is about to begin laying the groundwork for making Georgia the 10th state with no income tax.
Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, who chairs the budget-writing Senate Appropriations Committee, announced plans Thursday, July 24, for a series of hearings a newly created committee will hold later this summer and fall to pave the way for him to introduce legislation during the 2026 General Assembly session to eliminate Georgia's income tax.
“This is about competitiveness, economic freedom, and letting hardworking Georgians keep their money in their pockets,†Tillery said during a news conference inside the state Capitol.
Tillery will chair the new Senate Committee on Eliminating GeorgiaÐÔÊӽ紫ý Income Tax, which will include eight Republican senators and three Democrats. The panel is being formed by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, the Senate's presiding officer, who has pledged to make getting rid of the state income tax a key platform plank as he seeks the GOP nomination for governor next year.
Georgia Republicans have long made reducing the tax a major priority but have stopped short of abolishing it altogether. This year, the legislature's Republican majorities passed a bill backed by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp that cut the income tax rate from 5.39% to 5.19% retroactive to the beginning of the current tax year.
Various proposals to repeal the tax that have sounded good on the campaign trail have prompted concerns over how to replace the lost tax revenue. States that don't have an income tax have tended to offset that revenue with higher sales taxes.
Tillery said the nine states currently doing without an income tax have not suffered the financial catastrophe detractors have predicted. While the list mostly includes Republican-led states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida, the Democratic-controlled states of New Hampshire and Washington also have done away with their state income taxes.
Tillery said he's not entering the committee process with preconceived ideas of how to replace the revenue Georgia would lose by abolishing the state income tax. He said he wants to hear from Jones, fellow committee members, and from representatives of the nine states without an income tax.
“We've got plenty of ideas to choose from,†he said.
The committee will have until Dec. 15 to report its findings and recommendations to the full Senate.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
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