Elect Joshua Brant

Taxation and Affordability Reform

Purpose

To incentivize investment in Indiana and Hoosier workers without putting a hard cap on success, and to reduce the tax burden across the board except in the case of the most discretionary of spending.

Anticipated Outcome

An initial surge in corporate tax revenue for the state, followed by a plateau at higher revenue levels as companies adjust to source more of their products and labor from within the state and close extreme wage gaps. Doing so reduces the corporations’ tax burden while also boosting the state’s economy by creating new revenue streams and increasing existing ones. Additionally, the other tax reform proposals stand to make life more affordable for most Hoosiers, reduce some of the costs of doing business in Indiana, and help to offset any adverse effects on the budgets of local and state governments. In the mid-to-long term, industry should expand, consumer spending should increase, and faith in local and state economies should flourish.

Corporate Tax Reform

• Change current profit-based model to gross-based model.
• Continue 100% write-offs for in-state business expenses.
• Reduce to 66% write-offs for out-of-state business expenses.
• Reduce to 33% write-offs for out-of-country business expenses.

Wage Gap Tax

• Purpose: Apply a small, smooth tax to Indiana-sourced net profits, as defined under existing apportionment rules, only when the ratio between the highest‑paid and lowest‑paid employee becomes extreme.
• Define Employee: Any individual performing core business functions, regardless of employment classification.
• Define highest paid: The greater of…
  • The highest paid non-founder full-time employee,
  • The founder’s actual cash salary, or
  • The founder’s wage-equivalent compensation, based on standard market value (including equity grants, stock options, RSU’s, phantom equity, profit-sharing, deferred compensation, related-party payments, personal expenses paid by the business, loans forgiven or not repaid, and other non-cash perks).
• Define Frontline Grouping (FLG): The average number of lowest-tier employees regularly and directly supervised by a single frontline supervisor at any given location.
• Define location: A single physical facility operating under one roof, with a single general manager or equivalent.
• Define Hierarchy Depth (HD): the total number of distinct supervisory layers with actual supervisory authority between the lowest‑paid worker and the top decision‑maker.
• Pay Ratio (PR) = Highest Paid Employee Compensation / Lowest Paid Employee Compensation (excluding temporary employees, contractors, and interns).
• Common Responsibility Factor (CRF) = 10[LFG/(LFG+10)]
• Fairness Threshold (FT) = (CRF * HD):1
• Raw Tax Rate (RTR) = .005 * (PR – FT)
• Final Wage Gap Tax Rate = 0.20[RTR/(RTR+0.1)]

Public Assistance Responsibility Surtax (PARS)

• Purpose: Applies a tax adjustment to profitable corporations whose employees rely heavily on taxpayer-funded assistance programs to incentivize internal standards of livable compensation or help offset the expense of subsidizing wages for privately-owned companies.
• Mechanics: The surtax increases relative to the following variables:
  • Portion of staff reliant upon public assistance.*
  • The company’s profit margin.*
    *If either of these numbers are zero, then there is no surtax.
• Define Assistance Programs: For the purposes of this surtax, only Medicaid and SNAP are considered at this time.
• Define Assistance Reliance Rate (ARR):
  (Employees on Assistance/Total Employees) x 100
• Define Profit Margin (PM): (Net Income/Total Revenue) x 100
• Define Responsibility Factor (RF): PM/(PM+10)
• Final Adjustment/Added Surtax Formula: (ARR² x RF)/100

Property Tax

• Rebrand as public services tax.
• Remove forfeiture of property as penalty for late or delinquent taxes.
• Conform penalties to those of other tax systems.
• Freeze all assessed values of properties in Indiana at their current levels (i.e. no more automatic increases in taxes from periodic assessments), and only update taxable value when properties are sold. In other words, tax rates would gradually become linked to property values at time of purchase and not rise throughout the duration of ownership. Market values would still be free to increase.
• Still allow tax increases through referendums approved by voters but legally bind referendums to the use they are described as being for to the public.

Sales Tax

• Reduce sales tax back to 5%

Excise Tax

• Change to flat 30% on retail for all nicotine, alcohol, lottery, artificial tanning services, and CBD/THC/Delta products.

Luxury Tax

• Incorporate a tiered system adding a surcharge on non-essential, high-priced goods associated with discretionary or status consumption.
  • Tier 1: 1% for $10,000 over average retail price of good sold (APGS) where the APGS is under $25,000.
  • Tier 2: 2% for $50,000 over APGS where the APGS is between $25,000 and $100,000.
  • Tier 3: 3% for $100,000 over APGS where the APGS is between $100,000 and $250,000.
  • Tier 4: 4% for any purchase over $250,000 that amounts to double the APGS.
  • Tier 5: 5% for purchases of items categorized specifically as luxury items, including private aircraft, yachts or large boats, high-end jewelry, furs, collectible art, and exotic vehicles.

Utility Tax

• All essential utilities (including electricity, water, waste removal, and natural or artificial gas for heating) shall no longer be taxed for anyone.

Individual Income Tax

• Anything that would normally qualify as a business expense for the purposes of tax write-offs may now qualify as a labor expense and be written off on state taxes by employed individuals in the distribution of their labor.

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