Patrick Ishmael of the Show-Me Institute writes about Missouri tax reform:

The great humorist and Missourian Mark Twain was not a fan of taxes. โ€œWhat is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector?โ€ he asked in 1902. โ€œThe taxidermist takes only your skin.โ€ He later joked that, in America, โ€œweโ€™ve got so much taxation, I donโ€™t know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed except the answer to prayer.โ€ (No one doubts the federal government would tax intangible, divine returns, too, and will when the technology allows it.)
Twainโ€™s sardonic, salt-of-the-earth sensibility is emblematic of Missouri culture and politics, embodied most famously, perhaps, by congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver, who said in 1899: โ€œI come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.โ€
In 2022, the Show-Me State has more corn, (comparatively) fewer Democrats, and probably about the same number of cockleburs, whatever those are. But thanks to nearly a decade of concerted tax reform by legislators, state income taxes here are lower than theyโ€™ve been in over 50 years โ€” and appear to be headed lower still, thanks to a fresh new tax cut passed earlier this month.

Read the whole thing here.