Eric Miller of Advance America has a plan to completely eliminate property taxes which would raise the state income tax from 3.4% to 4.4% and the sales tax from 6% to 8%.
However, many disagree with his figures, most notably some Senate Republicans.
Senator Luke Kenley has been on a commission studying property taxes for several years and also sponsored the bill this past session allowing Local Option Income Taxes (LOIT) to help relieve the property owner and set the "circuit breaker law" allowing only 2% of assessed value of private property to be taxed. Senator Kenley disagrees with Miller's numbers stating that either the income tax would need to rise to 8.4 percent, or the sales tax would need to rise to 12 percent.
This difference may be the fact that Miller's plan takes into account what he calls a "state spending cap" saving the state $1.543 billion, whereas Kenley probably does not include this in his calculations.
What seems to be the major difference in their calculations is that Miller's plan includes savings from spending cuts and Kenley's does not. Unfortunately, the Senate Republicans have not been overly enthusiastic about tightening the belt in the State budget and have approved funds for a number of new special programs which are paid on the backs of Indiana tax payers.
That needs to change.
4 comments:
Great posts, Tim. Keep up the good work!
We also need to put pressure on our local politicians to cut spending. I'm from Indianapolis, and our City-County council, in conjunction with our mayor, is a complete joke in regards to stewarding taxpayer dollars.
I live in Allegany County Maryland the spending is out of control along with property taxes. The income tax is too high and so on.
This explains why voters won't be voting Kenley
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