Guess why we're not surprised.
For at least three years, a plan to make our state's income tax more progressive without depriving the state of needed funds has been before the Legislature, the press and the people of Utah. Known as the Jones-Mascaro plan, this long-standing voice in the wilderness has been widely praised by all those who bother to understand it.
That's because it would ease the tax burden on low- and middle-income families and properly shift that responsibility to those who have the most ability, and the greatest duty, to bear the load.
But subcommittee members, led by Sen. Curt Bramble, screwed their ignorance to the sticking place and refused to give Jones-Mascaro the serious consideration that is already long overdue.
Instead, the subcommittee stuck by a benighted version of a flat tax that, at least in its current form, would amount to nothing more than a blatant shift of the state tax burden off the backs of the richer households and onto those of the poorer ones.
Bramble added insult to injury when he attacked the Jones-Mascaro plan as a "redistribution of wealth."
Bramble seems toweringly ignorant of the fact that just about all of human activity, and certainly everything to do with taxes, business, even charity, concerns a redistribution of wealth. It is just a matter of whether those redistributions are earned, are fair and serve not only those involved but also the greater good.
Shifting the tax burden away from low- and middle-income families - as the plan from Reps. Pat Jones, D-Holladay, and Steve Mascaro, R-West Jordan, would do - is a good redistribution of wealth. Shifting that same burden away from high-income households and onto those less able to pay - as the Bramble flat tax would do - is not.
State Tax Commission figures show that Jones-Mascaro would save a family of four making $45,000 a year $245 in state income taxes, while Bramble would increase that same household's taxes by $322 a year. Meanwhile, a $1 million-income, four-member family would pay $9,654 more under Jones-Mascaro and an unconscionable $18,915 less under Bramble.
If this flat tax remains the task force's idea of "reform," then we'd be better off not having any.
