Analysis: 10 years later, the 2006 Idaho Tax Shift Has Resulted In An Overall Tax Increase Of $21.7 Million

Paying for government education using sales tax was always a bad idea. I know it sounded good when the economy was booming. But looked what happened to the economy once Obama took office…

A new analysis by Idaho Education News shows the 2006 tax shift engineered in a one-day special session by then-Gov. Jim Risch – cutting property taxes that previously funded schools, while raising the sales tax from 5 to 6 percent – has actually resulted in a tax increase 10 years later. Idahoans paid out $324.8 million in voter-approved supplemental property tax levies and increased sales taxes in 2015-16, while reaping property tax relief worth $303.1 million. The net effect: A tax increase of $21.7 million.

EdNews reporter Kevin Richert also found that as a whole, Idaho schools are collecting more tax dollars than they would have received under the pre-2006 tax structure, but there are winners and losers. The losers: 18 of Idaho’s 115 school districts are collecting fewer state and local dollars than they did a decade ago, when the Risch tax shift became law. The winners: 26 school districts are actually collecting more local property taxes now than a decade ago, thanks to voter-approved levies. The EdNews report is online here; it’s part of a series running this week.

Via Betsy Russell

2 thoughts on “Analysis: 10 years later, the 2006 Idaho Tax Shift Has Resulted In An Overall Tax Increase Of $21.7 Million”

  1. Scott Dredge

    Yes – look what happened to the economy when Obama took office. Stock Market went from Dow 7949 to today’s 18,481. What happened under the Bush? Great Recession. What happened when Republicans had consolidated power in Congress and the White House back in the 1920s? Great Depression. And every time that the conservatives are running the show and it all goes south, they get booted from the White House for several terms.

  2. You’ll have to take that up with reality, which saw the tax revenue fall across the country during those years.
    Did you even read the study?

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