(The Center Square) – Carli Jones of Gainesville told lawmakers she spends $28 a week on diapers and $70 a week on formula for her child.
“And in our household, when you see that line item of the state income tax coming out every month, it stings just a little bit because we are seeing those numbers, $28, $70 a week, daycare costs, different things like that, that are coming out of our budget that that state income tax could be going toward,” Jones told a Senate committee studying the elimination of the income tax.
Jones said one mother she knew left the workforce because of high childcare costs.
The Georgia Senate Special Committee on Eliminating Georgia’s Income Tax previously heard from policymakers, but heard directly from taxpayers like Jones and others at its meeting this week, who spoke in favor of eliminating the tax.
Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, presented Jones with another option.
“How does the idea sound of fully funding daycare or beginning to reduce the cost of childcare, because as you said, that’s not a lone example where someone gets out of the workforce because they are not earning enough to, you know, pay for childcare, and they stay home instead,” Orrock said. “What would it look like to raise the pay for the folks that are taking care of our children while we’re at work, to attract the strong talent, committed people that childhood, childcare is their forte?”
Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, in his view, there is no such thing as “state funds.”
“All that we do is take your money and we run it through a very inefficient process of washing it up, and moving it up and trying to allocate it to some very worthy causes and some causes that maybe the government has no role in funding at all,” Dolezal said. “So this, to me, comes down to really a core argument, and it comes down to what is the role of government. Should the government be at the center of solving every problem in this country or not? I happen to hold the view that it should not.”
Georgia has the second-highest income tax in the Southeast, according to Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. Only South Carolina has a higher one. Georgia’s neighbors to the north and south, Tennessee and Florida, do not have an income tax. North Carolina does, but is slowly lowering its, and attracting a new population in the process.
“So if we want to continue to be competitive and continue to be a place where we want people to live, work, and play, then we’re going to have to be competitive from a tax digest and a taxation point of view,” Jones told the committee at the meeting held in Gainesville.
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Jones is running for governor in 2026. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, who chairs the committee, is running for lieutenant governor along with two other committee members, Dolezal and Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega.
“There’s been a lot of comments that this might just be political,” Tillery said. “I want to remind you that the (primary) election is in May. The bills will be voted on between January and March.”
