Watch Seth Meyers explain what happened in Kansas when taxes were cut dramatically

Seth Meyers.
(Image credit: YouTube.com/LateNightWithSethMeyers)

It's not every day that small business owners ask for their taxes to be raised, but that's what's happening in Kansas.

As Seth Meyers explains, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) cut taxes for the wealthy and eliminated income taxes for small businesses, saying it would be a "real live experiment" for conservative economic policies. "That's a terrible sales pitch for something," Meyers quipped. "Those words only usually show up in shady classified ads." Supporters said the cuts would somehow generate $323 million in new revenue, but they actually produced a $688 million loss, and the state got creative when it tried to close the gap, at one point taking adult items seized from a business that owed back taxes and auctioning them off online.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.