OR History repeating itself
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Originally Posted by fatlazyless
Honestly, I just cannot ever see the spending being cut. It just will not happen . Meredith uses it's first tuesday night in March, annual town meeting for its' time to vote and just about every big item gets passed. Recently, a new police station, new community center, and new athletic field all were passed on their first vote.
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I fully agree that spending is very hard to control and real cutbacks are unlikely. However the proposed solution, an income tax, will simply be a disaster for most. How can we know that? Why just look a little to the West to our good neighbors in Vermont. Not that long ago they went through the exact process that we are going through. They had a property tax funded education system and it was ruled illegal through the courts. So what was the result of their transformation to a more enlightened system?
They have an income tax that ranges from 3.6 to 9.5 %
but wait, there's more.......
They have a sales tax of 6%
but wait, there's even more.......
Their property taxes are still used to fund education (how the heck did that happen?). The overall rates are very difficult to figure out because there is a state component for basic education around 1.1%. Individual towns can increase education spending above the basic amount and also add in town operating expenses. In addition, lower income residents can get a rebate (through a convoluted formula) on the education portion of the property tax. All this calculation makes it very hard to state a specific rate for any particular Vermont town. My guess is that the people in charge don't mind this because it makes it easier to confuse the taxpayers and easier to slip by increases. That said, I would guesstimate that the total property tax rate is around 1.75% minus any rebate. Since the median NH property tax rate is around 1.75% Vermont seems to do a bit better in property taxes.
Overall however, Vermont has the largest total state and local tax burden in the country!
So why wasn't Vermont saved by changing to the world saving income tax? We go right back to FLL's quote, spending was not controlled. Well, we wouldn't let that kind of spending happen in New Hampshire, would we?
When someone with big spending ideas comes to the state government in New Hampshire now, the reps can honestly say "We can't afford it!". They can't afford it because there is no tax generating engine for the state. As soon as you put an income or sales tax (probably both) in place you have installed a tax generating engine. After that when a "good" idea comes up all the reps need to do is step on the accelerator a bit (tweak the rate). We'll catch up to Vermont in no time.
And if the Vermont example isn't good enough for you almost every state has gone through a similar process and most have income, sales, AND property taxes. Just as it is difficult to control spending it is equally as hard to control tax growth. And the states claim that they STILL don't have enough money. Imagine that.
No thanks.