No Runny Eggs

Today’s Journal Sentinel drones on about Department of Revenue Secretary Roger Ervin’s whine that we taxpayers are “underpaying” Wisconsin taxes to the tune of $4 billion to $6 billion annually, or between 30% and 45% of the $13.3 billion that the politicos in the Capitol seem to think they’re entitled to. Before I get to items in the article itself, let’s take a look or two at those staggering numbers. There are roughly 3.5 million Wisconsinites between 18 and 65 according to the Census Bureau, so your state government is expecting roughly $3,800 from each and every working taxpayer. With the combination of the “progressive” personal income tax and the “regressive” sales tax, excise taxes, fees, and corporate income tax making that number pretty solid through the populace, is it really any wonder there is “tax-dodging”? Indeed, that combination, which enabled those that see huge government as the solution instead of the problem, is the very reason for that “shortfall”.

Now, on to the article….

State laws haven’t kept up with the ways taxpayers find to avoid taxes – including not paying sales taxes on Internet purchases, state Department of Revenue Secretary Roger Ervin said in his first in-depth interview since taking office about three months ago.

“We don’t have a mechanism in our government to annually update our tax statutes,” Ervin said. “If you don’t have that fundamental statutory authority to keep up with the market, you start falling further and further behind.”

Allow me to translate – Grab your wallets, folks. Gubmint wants to dream up new ways to tax you without any elected official having a say.

Ervin insisted that any moves to close the tax gap would not be a tax increase. He argued that more money flowing into the state from those who should be paying could lower current state income tax rates, now a maximum of 6.75% for individuals and 7.9% for corporations.

Bravo Sierra. More money flowing in is a working definition of a tax increase. Morever, history has taught us that if there is an additional dollar flowing into government, it will be spent by government; hence, rates will not go down.

Ervin was critical of the leaders of WMC for repeatedly saying that Wisconsin ranks among the high-taxed states nationally and that Doyle’s proposed budget would worsen its ranking because it includes $1.7 billion in tax and fee increases.

“We need to have WMC in here as a positive partner that’s willing to have a public debate about the economy in a very rational and mature way . . . ,” Ervin said.

Where to begin, oh where to begin? So much material, so little time. Since it is the High Holy day of Communists, I’ll start with the notion that Ervin has that it is the job of government to control the economy. WRONG! The Soviet bloc is no more because the governments that comprised it thought it could and should control the economy.

As for the “rational and mature” comment, that’s typical liberalism at work. According to Ervin and his fellow travellers, questioning the idea that $3,800 from every working-age taxpayer isn’t enough is verboten. Fiscal responsibility need not be brought up. The idea of government not being allowed to grow unchecked must be quashed at all costs.

HORSE MANURE! The root problem is that government is too big. It may manifest itself with a myriad of taxes designed to hide government’s true cost. It may manifest itself with fund transfers that have become the vast majority of state spending. It may manifest itself with the idea that government must provide health care, or tell restaurants whether they can allow smoking, or that we need two full-fledged Interstate highways between Milwaukee and Green Bay.