Time to end tax exemptions?
The following letter to the editor appeared in today’s Moscow-Pullman Daily News:
Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter has now created a Web site for us to provide suggestions for solving Idaho's budgetary mess (www.efficiency.idaho.gov). If you want to send Otter a message, click on the "contact us" button in the upper right.
And that website shows that nearly 75% of the Idaho budget goes towards education. And London and his buddies want to increase that spending by raising taxes. Brilliant.
Below is the message I sent:
Governor Otter, I would like to suggest a way to begin to break out of our budget dilemma.
Idaho is not meeting its basic mission of protecting and educating its children, maintaining public highways and emergency services and helping those who need help.
You and your political party officials continue to reject increased taxes, and in the last few years have significantly cut income and property taxes for corporations and affluent individuals. So, not surprisingly, the state's income is dwindling below a minimal level.
Given that rock (not enough money in the budget) and that hard place (a political commitment to not raise taxes), I suggest a middle road of ending the years of exemptions that have been created to both the sales tax and the income tax. Those exemptions can be ended and the tax rates unchanged and the result will be millions more dollars paid to Idaho, enough to begin to rebuild the schools, universities and roadways.
According to the state's tax overview (http://dfm.idaho.gov/cdfy2010/publications/gfrb/TaxStructure_Jan2009.pdf) there are dozens of exemptions to the sales tax. For example, sales tax is not collected on these products: ski lifts and snowgrooming equipment, glider kit vehicles and irrigation equipment.
We have an expression in the navy: his solution is like pissing in the wind. That doesn’t even begin to fix the problem.
That is unfair, and in today's budgetary mess, unsustainable.
Governor Otter, dump all these exemptions. That does not change the tax rate, and so is not a tax increase. But it results in a significant increase in the money collected through the sales and income tax. It's only fair.
Bill London, Moscow
I have an idea: why doesn't the Idaho Legislature take everyone who suggests raising taxes and tax them at the highest marginal tax rate? If they want to pay more, feel free. But don’t vote for everyone else to pay more while you yourselves skate out.