Revenue report: Secretary tells Taxation Committee exemptions, subtractions total about $11 billion in foregone revenue

Mark Burkhart, Kansas secretary of revenue, told the Committee on Taxation during a briefing that statutory changes recorded as revenue-enhancing were roughly $94 million, while exemptions, subtractions and modifications listed in the department's tax-expenditure report added up to "a little over $11,000,000,000" in foregone state receipts. The briefing covered income-tax conformity, corporate and individual modifications, and a long list of sales-tax exemptions.

The report is built from tax-year 2023 returns filed in 2024, Burkhart said, and the department relies heavily on electronic filings to compile the figures. "About 92, 93% of our returns are filed electronically," he said, noting that many large corporate returns still arrive in paper boxes that slow analysis. Kathleen Smith, who helps prepare the report, told the committee the department extracts line-item data from those returns to produce fiscal estimates.

Burkhart walked lawmakers through…