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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

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If Indiana is going to try to steal retail business from a surrounding state, it had better be Illinois. According to the Tax Foundation, Indiana's combined state and local sales tax rates of 7 percent ranks it 19th highest in the nation (Tennessee is No. 1 with 9.41 percent and five states tie for last with zero). That makes us higher than all adjacent states (Kentucky, 6 percent; Ohio, 6.83 percent; and Michigan, 6 percent) except Illinois at 8.4 percent (sixth highest in the nation).

Comments

littlejohn
Mon, 10/19/2009 - 6:30pm

I don't care for sales taxes either; they're regressive. However, the slight difference between our rate and our neighbors seems unlikely to make anyone drive across the border. You'd spend more in gas than you'd save on that 1 percentage point difference.
Ideally, I'd like to see the states get rid of all sales taxes and user fees, not to mention lotteries. Whatever revenues the states need could be raised by a fair, reasonably progressive, income tax. Things would be lot less complicated, and people might well cross our border for a zero percent rate, especially for big-ticket items such as cars.

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