OKLAHOMA CITY (February 16, 2026)—Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) President Jonathan Small today urged lawmakers to oppose Senate Bill 1302, by state Sen. Julia Kirt, D-Oklahoma City. The bill would repeal the state law that has placed Oklahoma’s income tax on the path to repeal by requiring that a portion of strong future revenue growth be partially returned to taxpayers through strategic reductions in the income-tax rate.

“The Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee is scheduled to hear Senator Julia Kirt’s disastrous bill to financially strangle the next generation of Oklahomans with a penalty on work, the personal income tax,” Small said.

“Senator Kirt has said we need to get to the bottom of why the headquarters of Oklahoma-created companies keep moving to Texas, yet here she is proposing to incentivize companies’ continued withdrawal from Oklahoma. SB 1302 does the exact opposite of what Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and the other six states without a personal income tax have done to encourage work rather than penalize it,” Small continued.

“Senator Kirt’s worldview and fiscal policy approach were tried for nearly 100 years in Oklahoma, and it created the environment that is still causing successful companies to leave our state today. We are bearing the fruits of those disastrous policy prescriptions,” Small said. “Lawmakers should ignore Kirt’s tried-and-failed policy prescriptions and protect the next generation of Oklahomans from having to be shackled with the penalty on work.”

Based on Internal Revenue Service data, Oklahoma has lost significant numbers of residents and associated state income to no-income tax states through the years. From 1993 to 2022, the most recent years for which data are available, Oklahoma has lost $646 million in net income to Florida, $944 million to Texas, and $70 million to Tennessee.