NC lawmaker says only the wealthy pay state income tax. Here are the facts | Opinion
A Republican state lawmaker suggested that income taxes are a problem that only rich people have to worry about in North Carolina.
“The argument that only the rich are getting the tax cuts is because only the most wealthy are paying the taxes,” Rep. David Willis said during a discussion on a PBS North Carolina show.
Obviously, that’s not true. The millions of North Carolinians who see state income taxes taken out of their paychecks every week would beg to differ. North Carolina has a flat income tax, which means everybody is subject to the same tax rate, regardless of income level.
The subject came up while Willis and Rep. Phil Rubin, a Democrat, were debating the merits and risks of income tax cuts. Rubin argued that North Carolina can’t afford to slash income taxes further, and doing so would only benefit wealthy people, anyway. Willis refuted that argument as “completely false.”
“The vast majority of folks in this state are not even paying North Carolina income tax,” Willis said.
That’s not true no matter which way you look at it, but perhaps the point that Willis was trying to make was that a majority of total income tax revenue comes from wealthy people. That’s true, if you define “wealthy” as everyone with a taxable income of more than $100,000. (If you define “wealthy” as the top 1%, it only makes up 10.6% of overall tax revenue in North Carolina.) But that doesn’t mean that everybody else is paying “less” in taxes, or that they aren’t paying taxes at all. Obviously, wealthier people will contribute a higher dollar amount in taxes, because the income on which they’re taxed is higher. A fraction of $500,000 is substantially higher than a fraction of $50,000. But they’re not being taxed at a higher rate — they pay the same rate as everybody else.
It’s for that same reason that tax cuts primarily benefit the rich. If Republicans proceed with tax cuts as planned, the top 1% would see a tax cut of over $8,000 next year, while the majority of North Carolinians would save less than $170. Perhaps that would be fine if Republicans marketed their tax cuts as a gift to the rich. Instead, they tout it as a victory for working families, even though it hardly benefits working people at all.
Besides, tax fairness in North Carolina is about more than just income taxes. The average North Carolinian may end up paying a lower share of their income in personal income taxes, but they pay a higher share of their income in total taxes. That’s because sales taxes and property taxes are inherently regressive — lower-income families have less disposable income and spend a larger portion of their budget on goods and housing than higher-earning families do. As income tax revenue falls, sales and property taxes make up a greater percentage of the tax base, which shifts more of the burden onto less wealthy earners.
What Republicans fail to acknowledge is that tax cuts have consequences, and it’s not wealthy people who will be forced to bear them. Taxes aren’t popular, but they provide necessary revenue for the government, which uses that revenue to fund public services. The cuts to income taxes have led to a decrease in revenue, and if they proceed as planned, it will create a deficit in years to come, forcing the state to cut spending to fill in the gap. Since the lower-income and middle-income people are more likely to rely on services like public education and health care, they could be hurt the most by spending cuts. It’s a scheme in which the wealthy people reap the savings, and others incur the cost.
Deputy Opinion Editor Paige Masten is covering politics and the 2026 elections for The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer.
This story was originally published May 5, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "NC lawmaker says only the wealthy pay state income tax. Here are the facts | Opinion."
