Gov. Mike Kehoe is set to give his State of State address Tuesday – and is expected to lay out his plan to gradually eliminate Missouri’s income tax.
State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick told KMOX Radio in St. Louis he is open to getting rid of the state income tax but warned the transition could be a gamble due to the state constitution. Fitzpatrick said that’s because of the Hancock Amendment. If a new sales tax doesn’t cover the lost revenue, they’d have to ask voters for a fix.
“If we cut taxes and we do a replacement, we need to have a high degree of confidence that our math on what that replacement is going to generate is correct, because if we make a mistake, we can’t go fix that,” he said.
Fitzpatrick, a fellow Republican, said the numbers have to add up.
“We’re probably one of the top states in the nation for local sales taxes and the number of taxing jurisdictions that are sometimes stacked on top of each other,” said Fitzpatrick. “In Missouri, when you add up all the ambulance districts and the TIFs and the CIDs and the, you know the city tax and all, all these things that stack on top of each other, we have parts of the state that are already in the double digit sales tax world.”
Fitzpatrick said he thinks it’s more likely Kansas City metro shoppers would cross the state line to a Kansas grocery more than St. Louis shoppers would go to spend their money across the river in Illinois.
“We need to do a lot of analysis because it is a risk, especially on the Kansas City side where the only thing separating Missouri and Kansas is a little bit of pavement,” Fitzpatrick told KMOX.
According to Kehoe, a responsible plan means not underfunding critical services. He has said revenue from other taxes could replace the revenue lost by eliminating the state income tax.
Gov. Kehoe’s State of the State Address begins at 3 p.m. Tuesday in the Missouri House of Representatives. Missourinet will livestream the speech on Missourinet.com.
Copyright © 2026 · Missourinet