Sort of following up on the subject of my last post, I share this release that came in a few minutes ago:
Ott Calls for Real Comprehensive Tax Reform
Columbia, SC – House Democrats voted against a Republican plan on Thursday that raised sales taxes by over $12 million on parks, energy efficient home products, postage, zoos, trains, and cargo vessels as well as many others. Minority Leader Harry Ott released the following statement in response to the vote:
“House Democrats have been advocating for comprehensive tax reform for over ten years. This is not even close to tax reform. These are tax increases. Raising taxes is the last thing we should be doing in this economy. This bill doesn’t even begin to address the real problems with our flawed tax code in South Carolina. This was simply a bill that was passed so that House Republicans could go home and say they voted for tax reform. It’s time to stop playing politics and pass real comprehensive tax reform.”
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Oh, yeah, Democrats? Well, I’ve been calling for comprehensive tax reform for more than 20 years, so don’t be putting on airs. (And even though I still haven’t gotten what I’ve pushed for, my calling for it is just as meaningful as you calling for it, because Democrats in the House don’t have a snowball’s chance of affecting that body’s agenda, especially not on anything this big.)
But you’re right. In all that time, I’ve never seen anything that looked like it actually come close to passage.
In fairness to you Dems, I will say that the closest we did come was when then-Ways and Means Chair Billy Boan led a study group that came up with a pretty good report after the legislative session of 1994, making proposals that would indeed have looked like comprehensive reform.
But before lawmakers could come back in January 1995, the Republicans had taken over the House, and all they wanted to do to taxes was cut them and cut them some more, with no thought given to the overall system.
Consequently, while there have been a number of special committees charged with drafting comprehensive reform since then (but none that looked as good as what Boan’s group came up with), they have all died before getting very far in the process.
And thanks to legislative tinkering here and there (pretty much all of them cuts aimed at pandering to this or that constituency, rather than trying to come up with a smarter and fairer system), our tax system is far, FAR more out of whack than it was when I started calling for reform. Termites have chewed through two, and to a certain extent all three, of the legs of the stool.
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I think raising sales taxes on exempted items, other than groceries, is a good idea, even if the Republicans have it, and raising taxes “in this economy” is not necessarily a bad idea. Elasticity of demand matters, and I don’t see people not sending a package because they have to pay sales tax, for example.
Bad Democrat!
We aren’t going to get tax reform until we get statesmen instead of politicians in our legislature, and we’re not going to get that, until we get an informed interested populace.
Missing Billy…I’ll let him know he was cited. 🙂