Why I’m glad proponents of a Tennessee income tax failed

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Why I’m glad proponents of a Tennessee income tax failed

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 | Political Survival Kit, Politics |

A number of years back there was a push for a Tennessee state income tax. At first I was for it.

It seemed reasonable. Unlike our 9% sales tax an income tax would be progressive. There were promises to eliminate the sales tax on food, which is in fact an onerous tax. Later I became convinced that it was unwise to give politicians more power to tax more things.

Seeing this made me believe even more that you can’t trust politicians’ promises about taxes:

TAXES AND SPENDING IN CONNECTICUT: “Governor Rell pretends to order a hiring freeze, garnering accolades for her stern budgetary discipline. Result; 824 new employees hired since May. . . . Our former Governor Lowell foisted an income state on us by arguing that we could actually save money by having a reliable source of income to calculate our budget on. Proving that if you give a politician a dollar he’ll spend two our state payroll has more than doubled since that tax was enacted, while our population dropped. Now we’re returning to the estate tax which was abolished when the income tax came in, to fill some of the shortfall in our projected multi-billion dollar deficit.”

And as he notes, one governor was a Republican and one was a Democrat, so don’t count on party-line voting to save you.