Speaking of Rotary — which I was a moment ago — we had a nice surprise today. It was preceded by this emailed notice, which I did not see until just now, about our main speaker:
Congressman Trey Gowdy is stuck in Washington dealing with the nation’s debt limit, and has been re-scheduled. Instead, our own Burnie Maybank will give a surprise presentation.
I repressed the urge, during the meeting, to Tweet out that he might as well be here, since he wasn’t contributing anything there. Sometimes I am a model of self-restraint.
Burnet Maybank, for those of you who have been away from South Carolina for the last 112 years, is the name of three key figures in S.C. government. The first was governor from 1939-41, and U.S. senator from 1941-54. The second was lieutenant governor from 1959-63.
But we concern ourselves with the current one, Burnet Maybank III, a.k.a. “Burnie.” He was head of the Department of Revenue under Govs. Beasley and Sanford. But he wasn’t just a guy who sat around waiting for the money to come in. He is known for having said to the folks at the State House, give me some money for enforcement, and I’ll bring in far more than that by getting people not currently paying their taxes to pay them. The Legislature went for that, and as recently as this year, a portion of the state budget discussion has dealt with how to spend the “Maybank money.”
There’s no nonsense to Burnie. And he gave a no-nonsense presentation to Rotary today. I doubt he had to prepare much. He got up and talked about what he knows — S.C. taxes, and in particular the crying need for comprehensive tax reform. I had of course heard a lot of it before, having worked for two decades with Cindi Scoppe — whom Burnie cited at one point during his presentation. But I started writing down some highlights of what he said. Unfortunately, I didn’t get far before my pen actually ran out of ink. Here’s what I got:
- We have a relatively low tax burden in this state.
- But it is a tax system that is “a product of hideous extremes.” For instance, we levy the highest property taxes in the nation on manufacturers, and the lowest property taxes in the nation on owner-occupied homes.
- We exempt more in sales taxes than we collect.
- The annual cost of the absurd cap on the sales tax on automobiles is $173 million. (Burnie gave a brief history of that tax. He said it was one thing when lawmakers came up with this cap to help auto dealers compete with a similar cap in North Carolina. But then the lobbyists went to work, and started exempting a long list of other items, including aircraft… that’s when my pen started running out of ink. But I did manage to write legibly on of the more ridiculous-sounding ones — “light construction equipment,” but only self-propelled light construction equipment.)
- The fact that 45 percent of people in the U.S. who file returns pay no federal income tax. (Doug likes to say 50 percent, but it’s 45.) He mentioned that to make this point: Grover Norquist is seen as the champion of the wealthy in his opposition to new taxes. But in fact, the beneficiaries of his standing in the way of tax reform is the 45 percent who now pay nothing.
That’s about all I got. But you can always learn more by reading Cindi’s work, or by following Burnie’s advice and going to look at the report of the S.C. Tax Realignment Commission (TRAC). Reading that isn’t as much fun as hearing Burnie talk about it, but it’s something…
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By the way, to give a plug where a plug is due, these days you can find Burnie at Nexsen Pruet.
I imagine Burnet Maybank IV will be talking about the same problems with the tax system in 2031.
As long as we keep the same people in charge, nothing will change. It’s that simple.
And by “same people” I don’t mean the governor. She doesn’t matter.