Small: Attacking the "rich"

Attacking the “rich”

By Jonathan Small

Liberals often argue the tax system should penalize the “rich,” who allegedly never pay their “fair share.” That argument has resulted in a system where a large share of citizens is declared “rich.” In fact, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers now pay an astounding 97.7 percent of all federal individual income taxes.

A similar argument is being made regarding school choice. Some critics argue the “rich” shouldn’t benefit from the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program. As with taxes, this argument relies heavily on defining much of the population as rich.

To illustrate my point, recall that an Oklahoma teacher married to a firefighter enjoys family income well above $100,000 today.

Under the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Act, families get refundable tax credits to help pay for private-school tuition. The lower a family’s income, the larger the tax credit. Families earning up to $75,000 receive a $7,500 per-child refundable tax credit, while those earning $75,001 to $150,000 get $7,000, and so on.

The two lowest-income brackets are given priority and served first. According to the Oklahoma Tax Commission, roughly 16,800 applications this year were from families in the priority income brackets.

That means numerous families with incomes lower than the income of the aforementioned middle-class teacher/firefighter household were beneficiaries. Yet opponents still suggest those families are “rich” people who could afford private school under any circumstances and should be denied access to the tax-credit program moving forward.

Oddly, critics of the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Act don’t demand the same means-testing for public schools.

According to the Oklahoma Cost Accounting System, public school district expenditures in 2023 totaled $9,538,453,992, and enrollment in the 2022-2023 school year totaled 701,066 students. That’s an average of $13,605 per student.

Yet if Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of Amazon, had school-age children and lived in Oklahoma he could enroll his children in a public school and get the full benefit of that $13,605 per child.

So, to recap: Critics are fine with giving billionaires $13,605 per child for public school but oppose letting working-class parents receive $7,500 in school-choice tax credits because the latter is a windfall for “the rich.”

Oklahoma can’t afford this kind of nonsense thinking to guide policy decisions.

Education policy should maximize educational opportunity for all families to improve academic outcomes across the board. The school-choice tax credit achieves that goal.

It makes no sense to say we want Oklahoma children to get a good education that allows them to become financially successful adults while simultaneously creating barriers to good schools and imposing punitive taxes on those who achieve financial success as adults.

Jonathan Small serves as president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.