E-Mail
Print
Louisiana has the seventh highest percentage in the country of adults who don't pay taxes, or who receive federal government benefits.
Still, the GOP candidate is heavily favored to win Louisiana...a bit of a paradox.
"There's something about the low income areas of the country that makes them tend to vote Republican," says Will McBride, Chief Economist with the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.
According to the Tax Foundation's most recent study, 39 percent of Louisiana residents who filed tax returns didn't owe any federal income tax.
"That's also part of a pattern in southern states, because they tend to be lower income states, on average."
Mississippi has the highest rate of non-tax payers.
"A big factor is the Earned Income Tax Credit, a poverty prevention program for the working poor," says McBride.
And, Louisiana can take credit for that program. It stems from a law developed in 1975 by Democratic Senator Russell Long that gives tax breaks for low-income workers so they can escape poverty.
It's a program that has generally received bipartisan and business support, largely because it encourages people to take even low-paying jobs, knowing their income will be supplemented by the program.
"And, it's just been expanded repeatedly in just about every administration since," McBride says. "Under Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama."
Other poverty prevention programs have been added targeting low-income households, like the child tax credit and other tax credits.
So we have, just in the last 20 years, roughly a doubling of the rate of non-payers."
Through the Earned Income Tax Credit, the IRS is basically paying the working poor with the refundable tax credits it doles out.
"And, these payments are so generous that, for most of them, it exceeds their payroll taxes," says McBride.
"It's due to these low-income provisions that we have so many non-payers, and that really explains the situation in Louisiana."
20 percent of Louisiana residents participate in the federal food stamp program, as well -- also the seventh highest percentage in the country. The national participation rate is 15 percent.
