Under Nevada's tax structure, the lowest-income families pay 11.9% of their income in state and local taxes. Meanwhile, the wealthiest 1% pay just 2.8%. (Photo: Jeniffer Solis/Nevada Current)
The 1980s called. It wants its tax policy back.
The One Big Beautiful Bill delivered tax cuts favoring the wealthy while slashing billions in Medicaid spending, threatening healthcare access for millions of Americans. A year later, everyone’s costs are up except the top 1%.
In Nevada, 31,000 enrollees are expected to lose care in the next 3 years. Forecasters anticipate $100 million in lost hospital revenue, likely driving up healthcare prices. Henderson Hospital, already struggling, just closed its neonatal intensive care unit.
With the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies, Nevada Health Link plans face another 17% increase.
Meanwhile, Joe Lombardo has pitched his reelection campaign on promises to expand high-quality health care for families, fund our education system, and raise no new taxes.
Which begs the question: who’s going to pay for it? In Nevada, working families are the ones footing the bill.
According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s Who Pays? study, Nevada’s lowest-income families pay 11.9% of their income in state and local taxes. Meanwhile, the wealthiest 1%, who benefited greatly from the One Big Beautiful Bill, pay just 2.8%.
Our state continues to struggle with education and childhood poverty, problems made harder to address by a system that asks the least from those with the most.
But to Lombardo’s credit, he’s pulling from a proven playbook. The only problem is that history has exposed its flaws.
After Ronald Reagan cut the top marginal income-tax rate by 42%, his successor, George H.W. Bush carried the anti-tax message onto the campaign trail.
In one of the most infamous moments of his political career, Bush uttered five words: “Read my lips: no new taxes.” His economic advisors warned this would make governing impossible.
Surely enough, the bill for a decade of tax cuts came due. Wealth soared under the Reagan years, but the benefits were far from equal.
Wages for many workers were backsliding, the federal debt ballooned, and in 1990 the country entered a recession. Meanwhile, the Balanced Budget Act threatened mandatory budget cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicaid if Congress failed to address the newly created deficit.
In the end, he helped pass the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990. Taxes were raised, the base was furious, and Grover Norquist, patron saint of the no new taxes pledge sworn to by Republicans from coast to coast, endured many sleepless nights.
While the headlines were incessant, Bush hadn’t actually raised taxes for the majority of Americans. He raised the top individual income tax rate by 3%, which touches households earning $621,000 or more, an unimaginable sum for most Nevadans.
At the same time, he preserved life-saving programs and expanded the earned income tax credit. Today, Lombardo faces a familiar dilemma.
No-new-taxes pledges leave elected officials with fewer options to fund public services, even as strains on those services grow. So when harm comes to the dinner table, we’re told the pantry is empty.
This is especially troublesome, because Nevadans need investment now more than ever. Working families haven’t gotten a moment of peace since foreign and trade wars launched a full-scale invasion into our monthly budgets.
Tariffs have turned everyday necessities into a luxury. Healthcare costs have gone up while care goes down. Homes sit on the market because they’re just too expensive. Gas prices skyrocket while billionaires launch real rockets into the sky, funded by taxpayers.
At the heart of this conversation is a simple question: Who pays, and what do they get in return? Families paying into the system are told there’s not enough money to keep hospitals open, while corporations and wealthy investors continue benefiting from generous tax subsidies.
If you own a starter home in Henderson, you’re asked to play by a different set of rules than someone with a hillside view of Lake Tahoe. Take Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Despite possessing a fortune approaching $300 billion, Brin paid no federal income tax in 2019, 2020, or 2023. That doesn’t mean he paid no taxes, but it does mean he’s held to a different standard than a doctor or nurse.
At the same time, Brin is pouring unimaginable sums of money into opposing nurses’ efforts to fund healthcare in California. Meanwhile, Nevada happily hands Google hundreds of millions in generous tax breaks for data centers, and Brin inherits depreciated tax breaks on his $42 million home.
As Nevada approaches the next legislative session, lawmakers can reimagine how the state raises revenue and what it chooses to fund.
That includes closing tax loopholes for big tech companies, ending property tax depreciation carveouts for wealthy residents like Brin, ending LET exemptions for ticket sellers who rob our children trying to affordably see Olivia Rodrigo in concert and their schools, and implementing sustainable revenue sources that can support education, housing, and jobs.
Washington State offers a roadmap. Facing similar funding challenges without an income tax, lawmakers enacted a capital gains excise tax to help fund early-childhood care.
Parents across the state already contribute their sweat equity to raising the next generation of Nevadans. It’s time we ensure private equity contributes equally.
As a proud parent, I want my boys to grow up on a playground where everyone gets their turn on the swingset.
President Barack Obama has weighed in recently, saying Lombardo’s opponent, Attorney General Aaron Ford, will hold the line on taxes.
But holding the line doesn’t mean that billionaires get to turn Nevada into another Delaware or victim of Citizens United. It means holding them accountable to contributing equally to the public services that made their fortunes possible.
Public attitudes towards revenue are more nuanced than the slogans suggest.
Recent polling by the State Revenue Alliance found that more than three in five voters believe paying taxes is important because it funds their communities’ needs and gives everyone a better shot in life. And an even larger share, 79%, believe Big Tech companies like Google should pay more in taxes.
Bush acknowledged something that Lombardo is trying to obscure: Governing requires paying for the supports families rely on.
So when Governor Lombardo promises no new taxes, what does that promise actually mean for the bartender, nurse, or school teacher already paying a greater share of their income than Nevada’s wealthiest residents?
It doesn’t mean their costs stop rising.
It means families continue paying some of the highest childcare costs in the country, access to quality education remains out of reach, and mothers drive hours away for life-saving medical care.
The 1980s called. Don’t pick up the phone.
