It’s always useful to look at what commenters choose to leave out of opinion articles. This is especially the case in the March 26 op-ed, “Removing earmark on income tax would be a win for Utah,” by Grover Norquist and Rusty Cannon, in which they describe their excitement about eventual elimination of the state income tax.
What they leave out is the minor fact of how the state will then replace that income. Take Texas, for example. I lived there and paid no state income tax for many years. Then my family moved back to Utah. The following year I paid less in combined state income and Salt Lake County property tax than I paid only in Travis County property tax the previous year. And this on top of the fact that Texas derives a large amount of revenue from oil and gas production. That imbalance remains today.
People, state revenues have to come from somewhere. The amount the state needs doesn’t change by eliminating an income tax. The relevant discussions should be about the most equitable way to allocate from where the revenues come. Reducing or eliminating the income tax is a way of allocating state income that greatly favors higher income and investment earners and at the same time making it even harder than it is now for lower income families to afford a home.
It seems to me that their argument to eliminate the income tax earmark for education is simply because until that is done they can’t kill the income tax. My recommendation on the earmark is to have that discussion when Utah education spending rises just a few notches from bottom.
Don Wilhelmsen, Draper
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