New ad says Senate leader Phil Berger cut NC income taxes in half. Here are the facts

Deputy Opinion Editor Paige Masten is covering the 2026 election for The Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer.

Locked in a competitive primary with a formidable opponent, Senate leader Phil Berger has launched a series of TV ads promoting his reelection campaign.

One of the ads claims that “North Carolina used to have the highest taxes in the Southeast — until Phil Berger cut everyone’s income taxes in half!” That claim, while partly true, is misleading. It oversimplifies a series of tax cuts that are both gradual and conditional.

Here are the facts: In 2013, GOP lawmakers took the unusual step of switching from a progressive personal income tax system to a flat income tax. At the time, North Carolina was only the third state to do so. That flat rate was set at 5.8% for the 2014 tax year. Prior to that, North Carolina’s income tax rate was higher than its Southeast neighbors. The highest earners paid about 7.75% under the progressive tax system, but the majority of people paid less than that.

Year by year, the flat rate has been gradually reduced, especially since 2023, when the annual budget accelerated already scheduled tax cuts. For the 2024 tax year, the individual income tax rate was 4.5%. For 2025, it dropped to 4.25%, and is now 3.99% for 2026. It’s scheduled to drop to 2.49% by 2029, but that’s conditional upon the state meeting certain revenue targets.

If those cuts proceed as planned, then Berger’s claim of “cutting your taxes in half” would eventually be accurate. But the tax rate that North Carolinians will pay this year still isn’t half of what it used to be, particularly for lower-income earners, who only paid 6% before the switch to a flat tax.

It’s also not quite clear when, or if, those future reductions will actually occur. Due to a standoff between Republicans in the NC House and Senate, North Carolina’s state budget has been delayed for months, and the holdup is rooted in whether to continue with the cuts as planned. House Republicans are concerned about the consequences of cutting taxes too fast and believe the revenue targets should be adjusted for things like inflation, which would effectively pause further cuts for the time being. The Senate wants to proceed with the cuts and has even floated the idea of lowering income taxes further.

There’s also the chance that the state simply doesn’t meet the revenue targets on time, delaying the cuts automatically.

Berger’s ad is also missing a lot of nuance, especially the claim that tax cuts are “saving North Carolina families THOUSANDS!” Yes, taxpayers are now paying less in income tax, but some of them are paying more in taxes overall. As revenue from income taxes has decreased, the state has become more reliant on sales taxes to fund essential services. When Republicans switched to a flat tax rate, they made other changes to the tax code that had mixed effects, including broadening the sales tax base and eliminating certain tax credits, including the earned income tax credit, which no state had eliminated in nearly 30 years. In practice, the switch to a flat tax benefited higher-income earners far more than it did lower-income ones, and the net result was actually a tax increase (albeit minor) for families with incomes below $84,000. The sales tax base was again broadened starting in 2016.

Whether or not the GOP’s tax cuts have been the financial boon Berger often describes is largely dependent on wealth. Data shows that families at the bottom of the income distribution pay a larger share of their family income in sales and property taxes, even as they pay a lower share in income taxes. The result is that the poorest families pay a higher share of their income in total taxes than richer ones.

Perhaps in a few years, Berger will be able to definitively say he cut income taxes in half, and it will be a reduction that actually shows up on people’s tax statements. But for now, it’s not quite accurate.

This opinion piece was first published in the Raleigh News and Observer on January 15, 2026.