Just how much is the Kansas budget crisis hurting individual Kansans? According to a recent report, every Kansas taxpayer carries a $6,500-a-person tax burden. By comparison Nebraska, Kansas’s neighbor to the north, which did not slash taxes, boasts a surplus of $3,500 per taxpayer.
As The Hutchinson News reports, the per-taxpayer onus in Kansas exists because the government has more bills to pay than it has money to cover them. It’s the highest per-taxpayer burden of any plains state. The tax hardship exists because of the long-term debt the state has accrued under the leadership of Gov. Sam Brownback.
That debt includes $4.5 billion in bonded long-term debt, most of which is a result of shifting payment of the Kansas public employee retirement system onto the backs of future taxpayers. In total, Kansas faces a budget shortfall of almost $6 billion.
