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Check out Arise’s new Alabama Tax and Budget Handbook!
All Alabamians should have the resources they need to reach their potential and ensure a healthy, secure future. To realize that vision, we must make our state’s upside-down tax system more equitable. And we must secure adequate funding for unmet vital needs like Medicaid expansion and public transportation. Alabama Arise’s new 2026 edition of The [...]
Personal Stories
‘Resilient communities begin with healthy people, period’
Warren Alan Tidwell has spent years doing work that depends on trust. He does the slow, often unseen work of bringing people together across differences after an emergency.
Letters & Testimony
Alabama Arise among 44 groups urging U.S. senators to delay SNAP cost shift
Unless Congress acts, Alabama will have to provide a huge amount of additional state funding next year to maintain food assistance benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). HR 1, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, shifted significant SNAP costs from the federal government to states in an effort to finance large tax [...]
News Releases
New Alabama Arise handbook explains how state taxes and budgets work – and how to improve them
Alabama should reform its outdated, imbalanced tax system to help working people get ahead and to ensure adequate funding for vital services like education and health care, a new Alabama Arise handbook released Thursday concludes. Legislators also should implement several changes to make the state’s budgeting process more responsive and transparent, the handbook finds. In [...]
Handbook
The Alabama Tax and Budget Handbook
We’re all in this together. All of us – people of every race, gender, age, income and background – benefit from a network of services from our local, state and national governments. From garbage collection to fire protection, from roads to schools, from public health to public safety, our tax dollars support the daily upkeep [...]
Handbook
The Alabama Tax and Budget Handbook – Introduction
The common good We’re all in this together. All of us – people of every race, gender, age, income and background – benefit from a network of services from our local, state and national governments. From garbage collection to fire protection, from roads to schools, from public health to public safety, our tax dollars support [...]
Handbook
The Alabama Tax and Budget Handbook – Budget Overview
How does state spending work? One state, two separate budgets Of the Legislature’s $39.1 billion in total appropriations for fiscal year (FY) 2022, about $20 billion came under the Education Trust Fund (ETF) Budget Act for education-related services. Another $19 billion came under the General Fund (GF) Budget Act for all other services. Lawmakers also [...]
Handbook
The Alabama Tax and Budget Handbook – Tax Overview
How do state taxes work? Most people would consider a tax system to be unfair if those who earned less paid a higher percentage of their income in taxes than those who earned more. But that’s exactly how regressive taxes work. As we’ve seen, Alabamians contribute to the funding of public services by paying taxes [...]
Handbook
The Alabama Tax and Budget Handbook – Income Tax
Feeling the pinch Alabama’s nearly flat income tax can’t offset our regressive sales taxes. As a result, the lowest-paid 20% of Alabama residents pay more than twice the share of their incomes in state and local taxes that the top 1% pay. It’s an upside-down tax system: It reduces the consumer spending that fuels economic [...]
Handbook
The Alabama Tax and Budget Handbook – Sales Taxes
Sales taxes: The key driver of Alabama’s upside-down tax system Should wealthy people pay at a lower tax rate than everyone else? Most Alabamians would answer with a resounding “no.” Yet that’s exactly the result that our state’s tax system produces. Families with low incomes in Alabama pay more than twice the share of income [...]