Republicans must make their tax-reform plan work
Published July 19, 2013
Editorial, Winston-Salem Journal, July 18, 2013.
With the announcement that they have agreed on a new tax-reform package, Republican legislative leaders and Gov. Pat McCrory have disproved one Democratic contention.
With that accomplished, they must now prove their own.
Democrats had been saying recently that the state’s three-sided Republican leadership was too divided to agree on a tax-reform package like that announced Monday.
Now that Republicans have their tax plan, however, the burden shifts to them to prove that it will, as they promise, “unleash” the state’s economy and create tens of thousands of new jobs.
Two years ago, at the end of the first legislative session in which Republicans controlled both houses, several brash GOP legislators predicted immediate economic recovery after they drastically cut the state budget and lowered taxes. The economic spurt didn’t hap-pen.
In a bit of an overstatement Monday, McCrory called the tax deal “the most comprehensive tax-reform package in North Carolina history.” The tax reforms of the 1930s dwarf this package. But the governor’s hyperbole should not diminish the fact that Republicans moved the state’s tax structure toward the GOP’s stated goals on almost all fronts.
There are lower corporate and personal income-tax rates, a flat personal income-tax rate, a broader sales-tax base on some services and a higher standard deduction. The estate tax is eliminated, as are some tax loopholes. In short, by about this time next year, when most of the tax provisions are well on their way to being fully implemented, the state’s tax structure will reflect this political leadership’s positions on economic development.
The budget will also reflect conservative Republican orthodoxy. It is much smaller, when adjusted for inflation and population growth, than it was when the recession hit in 2007, and it spends much less on public education and social services.
North Carolina no longer operates on the 1930s tax structure or a Democratic budget. Republicans own our economy now. We’ll just have to see if they deliver on what they’ve promised.
July 19, 2013 at 1:32 pm
dj anderson says:
Pretty good editorial! Republicans do own the economy now. Will most citizens be better off four years from now or not?
This is the biggest reform or change in taxes since 1935. It is reform in the sense that it is an improvement, but it isn't revolutionary.
The very evil, regressive sales tax remains, having been put on us by Democrats in 1935 and increased in 1971 and then nearly doubled by Raleigh Democrats allowing counties and municipalities to partake. I'm sure Republicans didn't resist the regressive tax.
The worst thing Democrats did was in WWII by FDR when the withholding law was passed. That stole away the power of the people to NOT pay their taxes as an act of civil disobedience. Imagine today, if 10,000 people could just not allow the withholding of taxes from their weekly paycheck! They would not have to stand in Halifax Mall. Of course, since the richest 10% pay something like 90% of the taxes, the shoe could come down on the other foot. But, either way, the people could have some power other than at the poll.