BY: ANNA KAMINSKI
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Kansas brought in more than $10 billion in tax revenue in the most recent fiscal year, which is about the same as the previous year’s totals but better than state analysts predicted.
Tax revenues in fiscal year 2025 were about $249 million, or 2.5%, above what state analysts predicted when they revised their forecast in April. In weighing all of the state general fund’s revenues, expenditures and transfers from the past year, total receipts to the state general fund were about $10.02 billion, exceeding estimates by about $132 million, or 1.3%, but dwarfing the previous year’s total by about 1.2%.
Around $124 million was transferred out of the general fund into the state’s rainy day fund, a move that is required under law but was an unexpected transfer to state analysts.
The receipts were a glimpse at the end of the first full year of tax cuts passed during a special session last year, which promised $1.2 billion in tax relief over three years. The 2025 Legislature similarly passed tax relief measures that promised to lower individual and corporate income taxes, but only if the state exceeds revenue estimates and maintains its rainy day fund. The Legislature also passed legislation that will modestly reduce property taxes by eliminating statewide tax levies. Those recent cuts have yet to go into effect.
Gov. Laura Kelly attempted to veto the income tax cut legislation in April, but both chambers overrode the veto almost along party lines.
Kelly warned at the time of a serious “financial predicament ahead,” referring to “bizarre and irresponsible budget gimmicks” from the Republican-led Legislature. When combining the Legislature’s 2025 spending plan with income tax cuts and 2024 relief efforts, the state is expected to be $461 million in the red by fiscal year 2028.
“Ultimately, this will lead to a historically large budget deficit, rivaling the worst of the Brownback years,” she said in an April 18 statement following the release of updated revenue estimates.
House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican running for state insurance commissioner in 2026, pushed back against Kelly’s warnings.
“Governor Kelly’s repeated vetoes of tax cuts and her sky-is-falling rhetoric look especially foolish now,” he said in a statement Thursday.
Hawkins credited the Republican supermajorities in both chambers with saving Kansas taxpayer dollars and energizing the economy.
“Moving forward, we will continue with the budgeting reforms we implemented this year to reduce wasteful spending and ensure a strong financial future for our state,” he said.
At the time Republicans passed tax cuts and the budget, Democrats criticized them for failing to deliver on meaningful property tax relief, a major campaign topic for 2024 candidates of both parties.