Barbour, a Republican, appointed about 30 business people, professors, economists and state and local officials to the commission several months ago. The group has met several times to examine tax trends in Mississippi and other states.Mississippi already has the most regressive tax structure in the United States. In other words we make those who have the most pay the least, and sadly those who have the least pay the most. Haley's "committee" wants to make our tax code more regressive than it already is. The governor is selling this cut in income tax as a trade off for raising the tobacco tax. I saw this coming months ago, see my post from a month ago. Haley the Hatchet
I am glad he is seeing the light on the tobacco tax, but he has other plans in those regards. He is planning on teaming a tobacco tax increase with a state income tax cut, to make our state have an even more regressive tax structure than the current, which ranks 1 out of 50 as being the most regressive. With the incredible fiscal challenges our state is facing such as this current Medicaid crisis, what sense does it make to cut taxes?We Mississippians have only been able to fully fund MAEP twice in ten years. We are currently fighting over a huge budget shortfall leaving Medicaid exposed. There has even been talks out of the governor's office of reducing the work week from 5 to 4 days for state employees to save money. One wonders, how in the hell does Haley think he can cut taxes without painful cuts in spending. These same "spend now, pay later" policies have played out well in the federal economy. The rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer. To put is simply, if you handled your finances like George W. Bush or Haley Barbour, you would either be in jail for fraud or bouncing checks.
Haley is rapidly becoming a cartoon in the political world, much like his protege, George W. Bush. Even Republicans know that the USS Barbour is a sinking ship. Phil Bryant would be wise to distance himself from the governor while they both still have any credibility. This medicaid crisis tarnished a lot of the shine on the Barbour-Bryant administration. Billy McCoy ate their lunch with a much more limited position to work from.
Don't fall for the governor's tax reforms. They might as well have been written by the corporations.
I took the time to download the draft proposal and read it. It is 30+ pages but mostly bullet points and easy to read. The proposal is much more complicated than Walters makes it out to be. In fact, the committee is considering lifting exemptions of some businesses that are currently tax exempt. There is also discussion on whether or not to tax capital gains.
ReplyDeleteOne major point of the proposal is updating software to collect the nearly $120,000,000 dollars the State Tax Commission is missing through poor collection practices. But this isn't a political point, it is an administrative one, and Walters doesn't comment on those issues. He rather pretend to be Wonkette and attack Republicans.
Walters makes like the Barbour tax group is coming after your wallet. The reality is that approximately 40% of Mississippians do not pay income tax at all. My advice is to hire a good accountant and you probably won't have to pay either.
I don't know if it is a good plan or bad plan, it certainly has some good and bad ideas, but the post oversimplifies the proposal and gives no real substantive critique. To allege that you spend so much time working on this blog, this post does not reflect your hard work.
Will you liberals ever learn? You can't have it both ways! When you tax something you get less of it...which will help decrease cigarette smokers, and therefore, medicaid expenditures for the state. Taxing those who are the producers in the state gets less production! Reducing the income tax will provide more money in the pockets of taxpayers who will spend it back into the economy.
ReplyDeleteI just downloaded it, too. It looks like this draft is just that, a draft. No recommendation has been made yet and the commission is going to review this and make changes before issuing their final report. I just hope in the end, we have less/fewer taxes.
ReplyDeleteBlast me all you want, but a proposal to increase sales tax and decrease income tax is regressive.
ReplyDeleteRPP: "The reality is that approximately 40% of Mississippians do not pay income tax at all. My advice is to hire a good accountant and you probably won't have to pay either."
ReplyDeleteElitest Alert!!
I don't think poor folks can afford an accountant.
I don't think poor folks can afford an accountant.
ReplyDeleteH&R Block has a booth at WalMart. They can handle the task I am talking about. I think it costs less than $75 dollars. This $75 can save you several hundred.
Spending $75 at the H&R Block booth @ Wallyworld to save a few hundred bucks doesn't equal 40% of Mississippians not paying income tax at all.
ReplyDelete