Two decades of Utah tax policy has cost public schools $1.2 billion a year, according to a report released Monday by Utah Foundation.
Between 1995 and 2014, the amount of school-supporting taxes Utahns paid for each $1,000 of personal income fell from $39 to $28, the report states.
And while lawmakers have added hundreds of millions of dollars to the education budget in recent years, Utah Foundation research director Shawn Teigen said, those increases have left relatively little for school investment after being absorbed by inflation and enrollment growth.
“Those big increases, on average, have been basically whittled away to about $22 million per year in new funding,” Teigen said. “We’re definitely not saying it’s nothing. It’s just not quite the grand push toward education funding as maybe it looks like on the surface.”
Utah Foundation researchers looked at several changes to Utah’s tax code — including the Truth in Taxation process and a 1996 constitutional amendment that allowed income tax revenue to be diverted from K-12 schools to support higher education — and the effect those changes had on reducing the flow of funds to classrooms.
