My dad was right, the Missouri income tax is awful. He voted with his feet | Opinion
Soon Missourians will have their chance to vote on whether the state phases out the income tax. I won’t get to vote, but my dad already did.
He founded his business, an innovative market research firm called Mastio & Co in Omaha, but his heart — and his ailing mom Elizabeth — soon called him to his boyhood home of St. Joe where Mastio & Co would be based in an old gas utility building downtown.
While my dad, Richard Mastio, was building his business from a handful of clients to hundreds spanning the globe from Japan to Saudi Arabia and Belgium, he paid the state income tax that he hated every step of the way. So did the dozen or so researchers, statisticians and analysts he hired over the years. They still do.
But then my dad sold the business and retired. He arranged to be living in Wyoming when the sale went through so he could dodge the Missouri capital gains taxes and retire in peace without any state income taxes to eat away at the financial foundations of his golden years. That was his vote and it left Missouri the poorer.
Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe has already axed that capital gains tax that used to punish investment in Missouri as much as it punished success by business leaders like my father and the talented professionals he lured to Missouri. Now in the State of the State address Tuesday, Kehoe said, “If we are serious about building a foundation for growth, to compete rather than be complacent, then we must begin the work now to phase out and eliminate Missouri’s individual income tax.”
He’s right. Oh, I know there is going to be a temptation to use flimflam to balance the budget and pressure to raise property, sales and other taxes. Kehoe said in his speech that he’ll fight those risks.
I hope he does, and I am sure he believes he will, but the hard lessons of 30 years covering government is that compromises will be made, and in the end it will be a mess that others have to clean up.
But eventually, we’ll figure out how to get along without the income tax that punishes work and investment and replace it with a combination of smarter, less wasteful government and taxes that don’t punish the growth Missouri so desperately needs.
As Kehoe said in his speech, Missouri’s economic growth over the last decade has been middling. Population growth has been stagnant. He should have mentioned that the population is getting grayer. To reverse those trends, we need to do something big that will shake up the state and make potential business leaders and workers alike take a new look at Missouri. Axing the capital gains tax and then phasing out the income tax is the big move that can make a difference. Kehoe had plenty of bows to agriculture in his speech, but for all its importance in the Missouri economy, soybeans, cattle, corn and hogs are not the future. In that, we’re the same as our neighbors.
With the Trump chaos in Washington — bolloxing ag trade, fumbling growth and doing little on inflation — it is more important than ever for Missouri to get things right.
Axing the income tax, keeping the door open for artificial intelligence investment and unleashing nuclear power are a smart triad of moves that can tip the balance in our traditional state to something less staid, a little more young and focused on the future.
Kehoe is right. That’s exactly what we need.
David Mastio is national columnist for The Kansas City Star and McClatchy.
This story was originally published January 14, 2026 at 5:08 AM.
