Representative Jasmine Crockett (D., Texas.) recently floated the idea of granting black Americans an exemption from paying taxes as a form of reparations, although she admits the plan might run into some problems.
Crockett appeared on The Black Lawyers Podcast last week and recalled a celebrity floating the idea of making black Americans tax-exempt for a certain period of time.
“I don’t know…that’s not necessarily a bad idea. But I’d have to think through it a lot,” Crockett said.
“One of the things they propose is black folk not have to pay taxes for a certain amount of time because then again that puts money back in your pocket,” she added.
Right after endorsing the idea of giving black Americans a tax exemption, Crockett began to realize the pitfalls of the plan and noted many poor black Americans aren’t paying taxes to begin with.
“If you do the no tax thing, for people that are already, say, struggling, and aren’t really paying taxes in the first place, it doesn’t really…but I think that we first need to do a study, we need to be very thoughtful, ” Crockett said. She cautioned at the possibility of states devising their own plans and called for consistency between federal and state legislation.
Crockett, a freshman lawmaker, represents a deep blue district in Texas, and won 91.5 percent of the Democratic primary vote on Super Tuesday. Earlier in the interview, she criticized opponents of reparations because they “aren’t even willing to do the studies, aren’t willing to invest to make sure we can roll this out the right way.”
“To think that America doesn’t owe the descendants of slaves is an error.”
San Francisco has considered a reparations plan where eligible black resident age 18 or older would receive $5 million for a total cost of $175 billion to taxpayers, or $600,000 per household, according to Stanford’s nonpartisan Hoover Institution. The plan does not appear to distinguish between black descendants of slaves and black Americans who came to the country more recently. Black lawmakers in California have put forward over a dozen reparations bills after the state’s reparations task force produced recommendations to make amends for the historical wrong of slavery.
Evanston, Illinois became the first city to pay reparations in 2021 after the city voted to provide $400,000 to eligible black households funded by donations and a 3 percent tax on recreational marijuana. The payments did not cure black poverty and divided residents as the program ran into bureaucratic issues.