Warning: NIL state tax exemption isn't hill worth dying on

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — There are at least a handful of people out there who are upset at Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders for signing a state tax exemption for athletes earning NIL into law.

The argument is there are way more deserving groups such as veterans, police officers, nurses, teachers and firefighters who has way more positive impact on society than a one year rental player swinging through the state chasing a bag of money.

Others argue that if this is being done to compete in recruiting against states without state income taxes like Texas and Florida, then Arkansas should follow suit and get rid of state income tax also.

It's hard to argue against the first point. Each of those groups are far more worthy than athletic teenagers to get a tax break. However, money for services such as maintaining quality roads has to come from somewhere and those groups are each among the the largest occupations in the state.

Sure, because they are often vastly underpaid the amount of money taken in per person isn't that much, but their collective impact on state coffers is significant. School districts are often the largest employers by quite a bit in their respective towns.

As for having no state income tax, having bounced back and forth between Arkansas and Texas for the past quarter century, trust in the assurance that isn't the dream some may think.

That's because the burden is no longer shared by everyone with a job. It is instead piled up on only those who own a home while only those who rent get to imagine they are not being taxed, although it gets baked into their ever rising monthly installments.

To paint the picture, my wife and I bought a home in North Texas that at the time was $150,000. Our monthly payment was a manageable $1,250.

However, Jerry Jones, yes, that Jerry Jones, bought the land next to us and also a ton of land around town.

His Blue Star group began developing like crazy and before long, the value of our home shot up to right at $500,000. That seems like a dream if you are in position to move and ditch town, but we had children in school and my wife entrenched in a career in town she didn't want to leave.

If we were to sell, we would have to move to another home in town, most of which had exploded to over a million dollars. Meanwhile, our taxes shot up to just over $11,000 a year on our home.

Also, as the home goes up in value, insurance companies get excited about raising the rates. We reached a point where the house payment ballooned to $2,900 without anything changing to our actual mortgage.

Of that, only a little over $400 was going to paying off the house. Had there been a state income tax instead of dumping everything onto the shoulders of homeowners, not only would the state's roads not feel like riding an old wooden roller coaster and require the construction of hundreds of miles of private toll roads to supplement the failing system, but our tax burden would have barely gone up.

See, during that time, there were very few raises in our income and they were minimal at best, so 4.5%, or whatever the chosen rate shared by all workers turned out to be, would have meant very little in additional taxation over time. However, by having a state with no income tax serve as our primary residence, it has been brutal.

It's why we have since given up and switched the equation to make Northwest Arkansas our primary residence and North Texas now becomes the regular work travel destination numerous times per year.

So, while Arkansas fans might be a bit disgruntled at athletes getting a tax break so the Razorbacks can be competitive in recruiting, just remember it could be worse. You could be Texas, and that's quite literally a very high price to pay.

So, let it go and let these visitors of a few months wander in and take their NIL money without state taxes because alternatives, including losing out on recruits, just isn't worth it.

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