Saturday, January 13, 2007
Editorial: The tax plans keep getting stranger
Hardcore anti-tax activists have a bevy of ideas to create fiscal mayhem.
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
Anti-tax conservatives in the General Assembly are throwing out some strange proposals. One could generously call it a brainstorming session, but the scary thing is that they seem to believe this stuff.
With Republican leaders offering a glimmer of hope for a transportation deal, the diehard taxophobics among the rank and file are whipping themselves into a frenzy because it would include raising taxes and fees to cover the $1 billion transportation shortfall.
Nothing doing, they say.
A regional plan for Hampton Roads? Not if it requires a regional gas tax or commercial real estate tax.
Statewide taxes and fees? Are you dreaming? We have a magic pot of money to pay for everything and more.
Blocking new revenue is the low-hanging Ginger gold apple, though (see below). There are plenty of existing taxes to eliminate, especially when they can pass the hurt on to localities.
There's the notorious car tax. Gov. Jim Gilmore a decade ago promised it would go away, but it hasn't. Some legislators want to kill it once and for all with a constitutional amendment.
Then there are local property taxes; they need capping. Papa commonwealth knows best how counties and cities should pay for their police and fire protection.
Roanoke County Sen. Brandon Bell has even bigger ideas. Why nibble around the edges when you can trash the whole system?
Bell wants Virginia to investigate the "fair tax," which would eliminate income and property taxes, replacing them with one whopping sales tax on goods and services.
It would also shift the tax burden overwhelmingly onto poor and middle class Virginians and cut the legs from under a balanced revenue approach. Real fair.
And when everyone else has gotten press for no taxes or fair taxes, it's time to go full circle. Chatham Del. Robert Hurt wants to tax illegal drugs. The potheads, coke snorters and ecstasy droppers would start paying up to $200 per gram for the priciest illicit substances.
Just to clarify for Hurt's benefit, taxes are for legal things. You put fines on illegal things. Or does he think dope dealers will fill in the new line on their Form 760s?
Professionals who lead brainstorming sessions always say there are no bad ideas, no proposals too outlandish. Leave it to the General Assembly to prove them wrong.
