Missouri voters Tuesday night rejected Amendment 7, which would have established a permanent public endowment fund, the “Show-Me-Prosperity Fund,” to support state government with a goal of gradually eliminating state-imposed taxes.
A simple majority was required for passage.
The amendment failed with 1,251,889 no votes, or 60.5 percent, and 815,744 yes votes, or 39.4 percent.
For Jefferson County, the amendment failed with 57.40 percent, or 44,151 residents, voting “no.”
The amendment, a byproduct of Senate Joint Resolution 95, was sponsored by state Sen. Adam Schnelting, R-St. Charles. The government-owned investment fund was described by Schnelting as operating like a sovereign wealth fund and could eventually pay for state government instead of collecting state taxes.
Schnelting told The Beacon-Missouri that his hope for the amendment was that “in, say, 100 years from now, or 125 years from now, Missouri doesn’t tax its citizens whatsoever — at all.”
“All taxes, whether of income, corporate income, sales and use, the state portion of the personal property tax or the real estate tax, all of them will be gone. That’s the goal,” he said.
But the Missouri Budget Project, an independent, nonpartisan nonprofit based in St. Louis, said Amendment 7 was unlikely to lead to the elimination of state taxes for decades. According to the nonprofit’s website, it noted that funding for critical state services could have been put at risk if policymakers used revenue to build the fund instead of for services.