Concerns rise for low-income families over legislature's recent tax cut measure

However, Nicole Woo of the Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network explained that broad cuts will benefit top earners versus those with lower incomes.

“For example, a family with an income of $1.5 million in 2031, they'll be getting a tax cut of $12,800 per year. Meanwhile, lower-income families making $14,000 a year, they'll get $469,” she said.

“$469 is a lot of money to those low-income families, but the bulk of the dollars are going to be going to higher-income households.”

Devin Thomas, senior policy analyst at Hawaiʻi Appleseed, had hoped that tax cuts or deductions would have been more targeted toward helping lower-income families.

“The more effective way to do it is to give people a targeted tax credit and there are several right now in the books, right? You have the earned income tax credit and refundable food excise tax credit,” Thomas said.

“Those are a much more efficient means of cutting taxes for a specific group of people because you can set what the parameters are, you can say this is going to apply to people up to a certain income amount and beyond that, it gets cut off,” he continued.

Woo said increasing the standard tax deductions will help lower-income earners. Research shows that itemized deductions are mostly used by wealthier taxpayers.

But the cost of the tax cuts concerns some advocates. An analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimated an initial annual revenue loss of $656 million, that balloons to close to $1.5 billion by 2030. That's about 10 percent of the state's total budget.