Monday, September 15, 2008

Tax fairness?

Last week, when I was out knocking on doors on the southwest end of Plain City (I live on the northeast end), I had an interesting chat with a guy I hadn’t met before. He was a registered independent that usually voted Republican. After giving my 20 second “why you should vote for me” speech, I ended with the usual question: “What is your family concerned about that I can work on when I’m elected?”

This guy gave the best review I’ve heard yet about the Republican flat income tax. “I’m at the peak of my career and doing pretty well. I have two grown children who are just starting their families. For the past few years, I’ve done the tax returns for my two grown kids, in addition to my own. And we discovered something this year that disturbed me. Compared to last year, I’m seeing a reduction on my state income tax, but my two kids had significant tax increases.

“Answer me this: How is that fair? Why are we increasing taxes on those who are struggling at the lower end of the income scale, to give tax cuts to those like me who don’t need it?”

Why, indeed.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Man, it's good to take tax policy points from "some guy whose door I knocked on."

It's hearsay...This story reminds me of Rob's evil Republican bully story.

Those evil little 8 year old Republicans.....They'll be running the government soon, bullying all those poor Democrats.

Dang-it!

Anonymous said...

With all due respect to the gentleman you spoke with, he's either doing his kids tax returns wrong or their income is going up which causes an increase in their income tax. The latter option is a feature not a bug (more income more tax). The "Republican flat income tax" is not even in place until this year, so no one has filed a tax return with that system. All the recent changes before this year cut taxes.

(BTW, every single legislator with a D behind their name voted for it, no? It may be useful to ask why, if it's really such a horrible thing for poor people?)

There may be legitimate criticisms to level against the "Bipartisan flat income tax" but sending out incorrect information doesn't help the debate when it comes to those legitimate issues.

Greg Schulz said...

I hate to say Anonymous, but he's doing them right. My taxes have gone up 11 percent under the new formulas. my Parents who are retired and living on an income that is about half of mine saw their taxes increase by 18%. On a fixed income, that really sucks. It seems the threshold for where savings kick in is around 75k to 80k. Since less that 15 percent of Utahns make more than that, it looks like Papa Smurfs goal was achieved of giving his rich buddies the tax break the so desperately need.