The late Brother Dave Gardner, a Southern comedian who was popular back in the 1960s, suggested in one of his routines that a good way to reduce poverty would be to raise taxes on poor people.
“Give ’em an incentive not to be poor,” as he put it.
Brother Dave was being satirical, of course, but some of the tax policies coming out of the Republican controlled Mississippi Legislature suggest Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn are taking such a theory seriousl,y although they would never admit it.
Geoff Pender, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger’s political writer, opined in a Sunday column that “low- to middle-income Mississippians — which is most Mississippians — already shoulder more of the burden of funding government. Lawmakers have passed many tax cuts for corporations and businesses in recent years that have shifted things more that way, and large corporate and income tax cuts set to start phasing in 2018 will make it more so.”
Gunn and Reeves have set up a special committee to study the state’s tax structure and make recommendations to the Legislature. So far, after two meetings, the committee has heard mostly from conservative taxation gurus espousing what the Legislature already has been doing — giving corporations and high-income earners tax reductions.
They advocate shifting the tax burden to user or consumption taxes, including eliminating a number of exemptions on Mississippi’s 7 percent sales tax which, Pender writes is tied for the second highest in the nation at the state level. To be fair, some states allow the addition of local sales taxes, which push the rates considerably above 7 percent.
Some of those exemptions may need removing, but some don’t, including doctor bills and prescription drugs. There have been arguments for years that groceries should be exempted from the sales tax, but that’s unlikely to happen given the state’s present leadership.
Neither, though, is it likely that most of the exemptions already in place will be removed. Each has its own lobby.
As the headline on Pender’s column reads, “shifting to user tax sounds good until it meets reality.”
There are some user taxes that should be raised, including on motor fuels to pay for the continually increases costs of highway maintenance. The state also should figure out a way to collect a tax from the internet sales that are now sales tax free — giving online retailers a 7 percent price advantage against local business operators.
It’s doubtful many sweeping changes will come out of those committee hearings, but we’ll see. The reality, though, is that unless there is a remarkable upturn in the Mississippi economy, which seems unlikely in the short term, somebody is going to have to pay some more taxes — or “user fees,” if you prefer to call it that. The poor will not be exempt.
