Mike Huckabee presidential campaign, 2016/Taxes

	; ; Former presidential candidate; Mike Huckabee
	Political offices: ; Former Governor of Arkansas; (1996-2007); Former Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas; (1993-1996)
	Huckabee on the issues:
	Taxes • Banking policy • Government regulations • International trade • Budgets • Agricultural subsidies • Federal assistance programs • Foreign affairs • Federalism • Healthcare • Immigration • Education • Abortion • Gay rights
	Republican candidate:
	Donald Trump
	Ballotpedia's presidential election coverage; 2028 • 2024 • 2020 • 2016

Mike Huckabee suspended his presidential campaign on February 1, 2016.^[1]

Ballotpedia's scope changes periodically, and this article type is no longer actively created or maintained. It may also contain neutrality issues.

This page was current as of the 2016 election.

On December 2, 2015, Mike Huckabee said he opposed a one-cent increase to the federal gas tax to help fund military efforts against terrorism. “Why do we need to raise taxes? You always want to raise taxes. Why don't we have the exploration of our energy, sell it, take away the marketplaces [and] we've become the supplier to Europe, Asia and Africa,” Huckabee said.^[2]

Huckabee supports a "FairTax," which would establish a national retail sales tax, in lieu of the current tax system that taxes how much income people make. ^[3] ^[4]

Huckabee has claimed that his plan would yield six percent economic growth -- two percent more than the four percent that Jeb Bush has said his tax plan would return. “I believe we can get it to 6 or higher with a fair tax. I'm convinced. I guarantee you we will goose the economy if you bring $11 trillion of working capital back to this country," Huckabee said.^[5]^[6]

In a March 2015 op-ed for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Huckabee said he wanted to dismantle the Internal Revenue Service and adopt the FairTax, a national sale tax that would apply to the purchase of new goods and services.^[7]^[8] Perry reiterated his support for simplifying the tax code in May 2015 to one "simple enough to allow many Americans to fill out their taxes on a postcard."^[9]

In an interview with The Daily Beast in September 2014, Huckabee criticized the estate tax, saying, "Some families have assets in long-held land that has to be sold to pay inheritance taxes. Why should a generation be punished for seeking to leave something for one’s family?" Huckabee similarly questioned the country's corporate tax structure. He said, "A tax is punishment. Why punish a company for making money? If there were no taxes on what we earn, imagine the trillions of capital that would flow here from around the world."^[10]

According to the Cato Institute in December 2007, during Huckabee's two terms as governor of Arkansas, he "increased state taxes by more than $500 million." The think tank also noted that while Huckabee "cut taxes 94 times," the cuts "were tiny, like exempting residential lawn care from the sales tax."^[11]

In 2007, Huckabee denied supporting a sales tax on the Internet. Instead, Huckabee explained he supported proposals to allow states to collect sales taxes on items sold over the Internet to out-of-state customers.^[12]
- Huckabee opposed a congressional proposal that would ban taxes on Internet access. Arguing the ban could cause Arkansas to lose $40 million per year, Huckabee explained, "We're not trying to after new revenue and make an additional tax. We simply want to maintain the existing taxing authority that we have." Rather than making permanent the moratorium on Internet taxes, Huckabee supported a bipartisan two-year extension of the moratorium to give lawmakers time to reevaluate the definition and financial consequences of the policy.^[13]

Recent news

This section links to a Google news search for the term Mike + Huckabee + Taxes