Though Texas is growing economically and reducing its unemployment rates, when compared to other states Texas ranks towards bottom in many service areas. According to report of Texas legislative study group, Texas is dead last in percentage of high school graduates, has highest percentage of uninsured adults in nation, and produce more hazardous waste and carbon emission than other states (Michal king, 203). Thus, I believe that Texas public policies are hopelessly mired in the values of an era that has passed, harm many of its vulnerable citizens and cannot be a road map to the state future success.
Texas is one of the nine states that does not impose a wide-ranging personal income tax instead it relies on high sales, business tax, and severance tax. Despite the variety of taxes, Texas has become dependent upon non-tax revenue sources such as lottery, investment and interest, license and fees, including federal funding. Texas reliance on high sales tax is affecting its tax elasticity, it is not growing with economy as expected. This tax system is not helping s
tates economy as a whole. The middle class to higher class family is tends to purchase goods and service which are not subject of sales tax which such as real estate transactions, legal service, accounting service, and brokerage transaction. If we see severance tax, the tax on extraction of nonrenewable sources which provide heavy revenue to state is steadily decreasing over time. Other government taxes like excise and property taxes are also not increasing as expected with rise of income of citizen. As a result, tax revenue is not increasing in Texas, even if the state is economically progressive. Beside this, due to regressive tax policy, lower income citizen ends up spending more on sales tax for daily needs rather than higher income citizen which place heavier burden on poor citizen. Thus, we can conclude that low tax system is particularly not helping economic raise of states rather it is favoring certain higher income people and tax burden is not equitable as every citizen end up spending equal amount of sales tax despite their income and social standing.