Whether and where to attend college can be a life-changing decision with significant impacts on an individual's future job opportunities and potential debt liabilities. Students, parents, and policymakers all have a vested interest in ensuring the return on investment is worth the considerable expense.  This is why there's  a need for states to focus on performance-based funding formulas for higher education. States across the country currently differ on their ap proach to fu

What comes back from the dead more frequently than Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger? Efforts to impose an income tax in Washington State. Like those perennial terrors, this income tax fixation in the Evergreen State should finally die, too. Unfortunately for taxpayers already suffering under the weight of the largest tax increase in state history  imposed earlier this year, a new income tax proposal is in the works for 2026. According to the Washington State

Idaho parents, my name is Meg Goudy, and as the Director of the Bill & Milly Kay Baldwin Center for Education at Mountain States Policy Center, I am excited to help Idaho families navigate through the eligibility and application process for the new Parental Choice Tax Credit Program. This exciting new tax credit was enacted through House Bill 93 to help Idaho families pay for qualified private education expenses. Several key deadlines are approaching, and I strongly encourage

Calls to abolish the property tax are growing louder across the country as elected representatives respond to constituents' increasing concerns about rising property assessments and tax bills. Wyoming is one of the states currently having this debate. What happens there next could be a lesson for lawmakers in other states. In the last year, Wyoming legislators passed stopgap measures to lower residents’ bills in the short term. The lack of meaningful and long-term reform, plu