Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

The education achievement gap in Minnesota is a real and persistent problem. For example, the 2016 graduation rate among black students was 22 percent below that of white students, while the rate among American Indian students was 35.5 percent below. While the gap in...

Income Inequality, Tax Regressivity are Worse Than We Thought

There has long been convincing evidence—both at the state and national levels—that income inequality has accelerated in recent decades, with an increasing share of wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Extreme income inequality—coupled with stagnant or...

School Aid: Halfway Back to 2003

Over the last fifteen years, trends in state aid to Minnesota school districts can be framed as a tale of two time periods: from fiscal year (FY) 2003 to 2012, real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) per pupil state aid to Minnesota school districts fell sharply; since FY...

Undocumented Immigrants as Taxpayers

Undocumented immigrants in the United States have long been a hot political topic. The vast majority of these immigrants are not “criminals, drug dealers, and rapists,” but instead are “integral to the nation’s economic growth” and have little to no negative impact on...

Minnesota Business Property Taxes Per Capita, Employee

Minnesota business property taxes really aren’t that high, based on analysis of information from the annual business tax report prepared by Ernst & Young (EY). As described in the preceding article in this series, Minnesota’s business effective property tax rate...

Minnesota Business Property Taxes Below Average

A common mantra among conservatives is that Minnesota business property taxes are high relative to other states—a view promulgated by Minnesota’s business lobby and interest groups. Analysis of data from impartial sources, however, suggests that the opposite might be...