Fact check: the Jackson plan
Rick Jackson's affordability plan, checked plank by plank: what each promise costs, and who can actually do it.
Rick Jackson's affordability plan, checked plank by plank: what each promise costs, and who can actually do it.
On August 20, Republican nominee Rick Jackson released an affordability plan while answering questions about his companies' business with the state (Capitol Beat covered both). Promises don't fact-check. Price tags and powers do. Each plank below gets two questions: what does it cost, and who can actually do it. Every number links to its source.
In March, Jackson promised to unwind his companies' state contracts if elected (AJC). On July 22, his staffing company LocumTenens renewed its contract with the state behavioral health agency through June 30, 2027. That is six months past the next governor's swearing-in. The company has been paid about $17.9 million under the arrangement since 2022, about $5 million of it in the past year. 11Alive found the renewal in state records. Jackson's answer: the contract could and would be canceled if he wins.
The wider money picture was checked on this site's fact-check page already. His companies have been paid close to $1 billion by Georgia agencies since 2020. Most of it, about $710 million, was federal COVID relief passed through the state (GPB, Healthbeat).
The income tax brought in about $15.47 billion in 2023, the Senate's own committee report says. Half of that is roughly $7.7 billion a year, out of a $38.5 billion state budget. The committee priced a much smaller first step at $3 billion, then $6 billion a year, and leaned on reserves of $14 to $17 billion. Reserves spend once. Every rate change belongs to the General Assembly, which is already cutting toward 4.99%. The direction is real. The pay-for is not on paper anywhere.
Verdict: the math is the fight
Georgia has done this. The 2022 suspension started as a law, HB 304, then ran on executive orders. The governor's emergency tax power ends the day the legislature meets, which is why that suspension died on January 10, 2023 (state revenue department). The 2022 run was worth about $1.7 billion, roughly $170 million a month (11Alive), so 60 days costs about $340 million in road money. Making it automatic takes a new law.
Verdict: proven, but not automatic without the legislature
The tax is real. Georgia's exemption list covers factories and power plants, not households (O.C.G.A. § 48-8-3), so home utility bills carry the state's 4% sales tax. On a $200 power bill that is about $8 a month. Repeal is an ordinary exemption the legislature can pass. Nobody, including the campaign, has published what it would cost the state. Local sales taxes would stay.
Verdict: real tax, no price tag offered
Georgia taxes tips as wages today, and a bill to change that already exists: SB 2, pending in the state Senate as of January (WSB-TV). A small slice of the income tax base, with no published Georgia cost estimate. Its fate belongs to the General Assembly with or without him.
Verdict: already moving without him
Most of this happened in 2024. HB 581, ratified by voters, caps how fast a homestead's taxable value can rise at the inflation rate, statewide, with local opt-outs (county association FAQ). A hard freeze goes further and likely needs another referendum. And property tax is local money, so the cost lands on counties and school districts, not the state.
Verdict: mostly already law
Already done, by the current governor. Kemp opted Georgia in on January 20, 2026, and the credit starts January 1, 2027 (Ballotpedia tracks state participation). Unless Jackson means something beyond joining, this promises a thing that has happened. It also moves federal tax money, not state money.
Verdict: already done
The pay-for for everything above, with no cuts named. Jackson says there is not a business he can't cut 10% out of. Ten percent of the state budget is roughly $3.9 billion. K-12 schools alone take $14.2 billion, more than a third of all state funds (GBPI), before colleges are counted. Cuts that size reach schools whether the plan says so or not.
Verdict: can't be checked until he names the cuts
The plan promises roughly $8 billion a year in permanent tax cuts, paid for by unnamed spending cuts and one-time reserves. One plank is already law by another governor's hand. One is already a pending bill. One mostly exists as HB 581's cap. One is a proven maneuver that needs a new statute to become automatic. The centerpiece is unfunded at several times the scale of anything Georgia has enacted. Nothing on the list happens by a governor's signature alone.
Last updated August 21, 2026. Read the ad-by-ad checks on the Fact Check Ads page.