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

What's yours is ours

No, no, a thousand times no:

Is now the time for the Indiana General Assembly to consider a progressive income tax? When Gov. Mitch Daniels proposed a one-year higher tax rate for upper income households, his idea died faster than the annual hopes of a Cubs fan.

More than 30 states already have some form of a progressive income tax, which in good times builds government reserves that can be used when revenues decline in bad times.

In a time when there is a growing desire to simpify taxes, we want to make Indiana's more complicated? The goal of taxation, I should think, is to decide what needs to be done, then raise the necessary funds, being as utilitarian as possible and the least punitive possible. With a flat rate, people pay more as they can pay more. A rate of 6 percent raises $6,000 from someone who makes $100,000, $1,200 from someone who makes $20,000. That is fair. The only thing accomplished by making state taxes progressive is to punish people for doing well. But of course that's the point:

Governments also establish the means whereby the less wealthy can improve their economic status. They support the schools, libraries and public transit systems that provide opportunities for those with talent and skills to succeed. Taxes are the means by which the more wealthy support governments, thereby helping reduce the disparities of life.

There you have it, the politics of envy. The purpose of government is to redistribute wealth.

Comments

Bob G.
Mon, 12/11/2006 - 8:26am

No matter how many ways these politcos try to reinvent the "plumbing"....it's always going to be just as easy to "stop up the drain".

;)

B.G.

Steve Towsley
Mon, 12/11/2006 - 9:07am

If Mitch wants to make some serious money, let him leave wage-earners alone for a change and raise taxes for a year on big businesses, wealthy investors and financiers. Now THAT'S a windfall!

Bob G.
Mon, 12/11/2006 - 11:29am

Now that's MY kind of wealth "redistribution", Steve!

B.G.

Doug
Mon, 12/11/2006 - 11:48am

Fair? Life isn't fair. At least that's what my folks told me. Fact is, a person needs dollars $0 to $20k a lot more than a person needs dollars $80k to $100k and you need those dollars a lot more than dollars $980k to $1,000k. Because you've obviously prospered more under the society in which you operate than the schmuck trying to raise his family on $30k per year, it's "fair" that you pay a higher tax rate on dollars $980k to $1,000k than you (or anyone else) does on dollars $20k to $30k.

See, it's "fair" this way, because the working schmuck has to pay just as much as you do on *his* 980 thousandth dollar.

(I say, "you," just because I'm working under the impression that your average News Sentinel editorial page employee takes home about a million bucks a year, more or less. That about right Leo?) :-)

Laura
Mon, 12/11/2006 - 6:01pm

Flat tax would be best. No more loopholes and all of these special deductions. Businesses would have to pay their fair share as well as alot of other people.

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