A Conversation with Rep. Bob Titus of the 139th District

Rep. Titus, one of the Brave Ten in the Missouri House, explains how the legislative session is going.

Cross Post: The Shell Game: Missouri's Latest Tax Reform Proposal Bundles Distractions with Tax Increases

 By David Rice

This is unconstitutional, threatens grassroots and free speech, packaged with special favors and libertarian fever dreams about gold and silver in the hope everyone will close their eyes and vote yes.

Multiple Issues Bundled Unconstitutionally

 The revised proposal (SCS/SJR 31) attempts to bundle multiple constitutional changes into a single amendment they will pass on to the voters as a Ballot Initiative. If this is such a great idea, why won’t they go on record and vote on it as the illustrious Senate and House and have Kehoe sign it? Why should they propose it to the voters using deceptive language?

1. Tax System Overhaul:

• Eliminate income tax
• Add new sales taxes
• Create a complex fund structure

2. State Investment Policy:

"Moneys in the strategic gold and silver reserve fund shall be kept in an account and expended each year solely for the purpose of purchasing gold or silver...such gold or silver shall be physically kept within the borders of the state of Missouri."

According to Ballotpedia, multi-issue ballot initiatives violate Missouri's requirement for single-subject amendments passed in 1998, which appeared designed to distract from the tax burden with appealing but unrelated provisions. They have the same Missouri Constitutional restriction on passing single-issue bills, but they do it all the time. Our Super majority conservatives, follow-the-law Republicans, never seem to follow the Constitution.

The Numbers That Don't Add Up

In their fiscal analysis, they expect a budget shortfall to occur when they drop the income tax. They state they will lose over $8B in revenue from not having Income Tax. However, we currently collect $13B in income tax. If they are correct, the additional sales tax (VAT Tax) will generate a $5B loss between what Missouri collects and what Missouri currently collects in Income Tax. They expect their extra 3.75% sales tax will somehow generate $8B when I showed how difficult it would be to generate over $5B in my article last week. I was generous with my predictions in a way that would be hard for Missouri households to follow through on purchases.

To generate this Sales Tax (VAT Tax) revenue, every Missouri household must buy brand-new cars and appliances yearly and spend every dime from the Income Tax they don’t have taken out of their checks. They do not expect you to save your money and invest it wisely in yourself, but for you to be a market consumer that will give more of your money to them through their sales tax (which is essentially a Value Added Tax on all services and goods, including utilities which they plan to also raise the prices through Senate Bill 100.)

Source: Official Fiscal Note, January 9, 2025*

Source: Official Fiscal Note, January 9, 2025*

After they raise corporate taxes, which means you pay more taxes on goods and services on top of their Sales Tax (VAT Tax), you’ll have less money every time you leave the store. Don’t worry; it is all voluntary spending. You don’t have to purchase groceries, gas, or other goods. We only want to charge you for consumption, not for earning.

Sorry, people, but this isn’t better. They are both regressive and until they get their spending under control, there’s going to be no end to bleeding from your paycheck one way or another to pay the cost to cover special interests for their political allies and donors.

The Phantom Lobbying Tax

• The current proposal includes a 6% tax on "lobbying services" but fails to:
• Define or describe that constitutes lobbying services
• Establish collection mechanisms
• Address tracking/reporting requirements
• Specify enforcement procedures

The text from the Ballot language on the bill:

"An additional state sales tax is levied for the rendering of lobbying services in this state. The tax shall be at a rate equivalent to six percent."

As taxpayers, we should know how lobbying service is defined. Will they tax a lobbyist whenever they attack journalists for telling the truth on social media on behalf of the Representative who’s too scared to do it himself? I doubt it. Who will be considered a lobbyist? Will they tax grassroots lobbyists out of existence so only wealthy lobbyists can afford to speak to your representatives?

1. What will happen to Free Speech?
2. What about pro-bono lobbying?
3. How are mixed services (legal/lobbying) treated?
4. Who tracks/reports/collects?

The General Assembly is creating a system rife for abuse here where there will be kickbacks to wealthy lobbyists. This system will readily cover the costs of these new taxes. Guess who pays for the taxes? You—the taxpayer. Your Representative will help pass bills.

The lobbyist writes the bills for the representatives and senators they don’t read because, as Shield Maidens stated, “they are too busy attending parties and photo ops.” 

These bills benefit lobbyist employers/donors/crime syndicates. I’m not exaggerating. This Hadean plan is designed to shut up grassroots and small firms trying to speak to the general assembly. If you can’t write checks to their PACs, you can’t afford the taxes. So, the message is clear: Stay out of the Capitol.

The new political environment forces individuals to join large corporate lobbyists whose mission doesn’t have individual freedom at the center of raison d'être. We would be faceless—just as the General Assembly wants us to be. 

Feel-Good Provisions Without Teeth     

Gold and Silver Fund

 "Gold and silver within the possession of the strategic gold and silver reserve shall not be sold, liquidated, or transferred to the custody of any entity that is not the state of Missouri without a constitutional amendment modifying this subsection."

This provision:

• Has no fiscal impact on the tax burden
• Creates no enforcement mechanism
• Provides no funding source
• Distracts from core issues

 Silver and gold reserves are the third issue on this ballot initiative. The law writers (Lobbysists) designed it to scrape together the votes of Conservatives and Libertarians who want a gold and silver standard. It sounds great on paper, but it doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s constructed to be a flashy honey trap to get votes from desperate Libertarians. Politicians promise Libertarians much—this is an empty promise to them.

Spending Limits

From the bill:

"The spending limitation on the appropriation authority of the general assembly under subsection 2 of this section may be raised if the general assembly authorizes an increase in the appropriation authority..."

But:

• Federal funds explicitly excluded
• Multiple override mechanisms
• No actual reduction requirements
• Easy legislative workarounds

Again, they find a way to look like they are trying to reign in spending. Still, the General Assembly has created workarounds in the bill's language to keep accepting federal funds and to have multiple override mechanisms—with no language stating how much they plan to reduce spending. They allow the General Assembly to say “No” to cuts in expenditures. 

Spending limits, silver and gold, and no income tax look good on paper, but it’s a legal three-card Monte game. The lobbyists who wrote this bill want you to think you can win at this fraud, but the Queen of Hearts was never on the table.

The Real Numbers vs. Their Projections

When you examine their data and the accurate data (the actual income tax revenue is $13.35B), you can see that they don’t consider how much spending has increased by nearly 100% in the last 5 years. They calculate that sales tax will only be a large portion of the actual revenue loss ($8 of the $8.5B needed). If they can generate $8B in sales tax, decidedly generous predictions will make it difficult for Missouri households to achieve that level of taxation without a punitively aggressive tax policy. 

Even if they are right and break even as they wrongly project, they are telling the taxpayer we’ll cancel your taxes of $100 over here. Still, we’ll make sure you pay your taxes of $99.50 over here, plus some hidden corporate taxes we won’t tell you about, which means we’ll be taking $101.50 from you when we distracted you because you listened to our word and didn’t look at our hands. 

Hidden Access to Information

As of February 13, 2025, accessing the entire bill text returns:

 

This restriction of public access to legislative text while promoting feel-good ballot language suggests a deliberate strategy to control information. After I published my articles on Feb. 10th and 11th, they hid the bill's original language, and their agents of chaos went on a campaign calling me a liar on social media or accusing me of misrepresenting the bill.

 

The House website routinely hides information on their website, as I covered with Jeff Farnan and his support of gun control.

I saved the bill’s language and still had access to it when Senator Ben Brown sent me the “revised” language. I compared it with the original bill, used my previous articles, and added the fiscal note above.

Here is what else hidden by the website. The bill's sponsors include two local Christian County representatives: Bob Titus and Jamie Gragg. We also have Bishop Davidson from Republic (Green County). Jonathan Patterson, the Democratic Majority Leader, also supports this bill. 

Oops. Sorry. I heard Patterson identifies as a Republican when he holds the gavel.

Ballot Language vs. Reality

Your taxes will go up in places you won’t expect. Your paycheck will have less coming out of it from Missouri Income Tax. However, your groceries, gas, goods, utilities, services, and even your dry cleaning will increase in cost. They will take you to the cleaners.

They will nickel and dime you because they refuse to get their spending under control and back to 2020 levels. 2020 was only five years ago. We’re not talking about returning to 1970, but we could. 

Conclusion

The revised proposal:

1. Violates single-subject constitutional requirements
2. Uses gold/silver provisions as a distraction
3. Creates unenforceable feel-good measures
4. Hides inevitable fiscal crisis behind voter approval
5. Maintains or increases spending throughout
6. The failure to generate enough Sales Tax (VAT Tax) will likely result in both tax systems remaining in place

Rather than honest fiscal reform, this appears to be a sophisticated ballot initiative to fool the taxpayer voters in the state into voting a new tax burden onto themselves that can be expanded incrementally by our Uniparty government. Do you think Democrats in charge could do any more damage than these Uniparty Republicans? 

As Missourians, we know this spending crisis will overwhelm us sooner rather than later. Especially if Donald Trump gets spending under control in DC and stops the wasteful spending we have seen in the Federal government. 

Kehoe’s Supermajority of Crooked Republicans will continue to steal from the coffers of families to throw money at lobbyists without a care about the burden on single mothers he talks about in his speeches. We do not have too few taxes in Missouri. 

The income tax is a heavy, regressive burden passed onto us by progressive liberals. It is time for us to remove it. However, the solution to eliminating it must come with reducing the size of our state’s government to the minimum needed to function. Any less than that, and every tax is theft and a burden on families struggling to survive, much less save and thrive.

 This bill expands government revenue while using unconstitutional bundling and information control to obscure its true impact.