Released November 11, 2026
Executive Summary: The Fair Share Tax offers Pennsylvania an opportunity to modernize its Personal Income Tax by recognizing meaningful differences among income sources while respecting the Commonwealth’s constitutional requirements. By reducing the rate on wages and other specified sources while increasing rates on certain investment and business income, the proposal would provide tax relief to many working families, shift more of the tax burden toward income sources concentrated among higher-income households, and generate additional revenue for public investments.
According to our modeling, the main Fair Share Tax proposal, with a 2.8 percent tax rate on specified income from work and a 7.5 percent rate on specified income from wealth, would generate an estimated $4.364 billion in additional annual revenue at 2026 income levels. Approximately 80.4 percent of gross tax increases among Pennsylvania residents would come from the top 5 percent of households, including 63.7 percent from the top 1 percent.