Arkansas Blog

Amen! to Rich Huddleston"s suggestions about progressive taxation for needed increase in State revenue: 'State leaders need to consider raising new revenue that won't put more weight on low- and middle-income working families. Options include closing corporate income tax loopholes through combined reporting, eliminating the 30 percent percent exemption for capital gains, re-establishing the estate tax, or adopting an income tax surcharge." But why the word "or"? Why not "and"? All of these options should be adopted.

I would emphasize the importance of closing corporate income tax loopholes. Why? Because an earned income tax credit is also, in effect, an incentive and subsidy for employers to keep wages low. If government enables a company's employees to live on that company's low wages, the company not only saves a wage increase, but also the employer's half of payroll taxes on the increase. Emmployers' net profits should be taxed to provide the revenue necessary for an EITC for their EITC-eligible employees. (Companies like Wa-lMart and Tyson have thousands of them.)

Yeah, what Snapback said about the EITC and the equivalent subsidy on low wages. People don't always realize the corporate side of the fence involving payroll taxes, benefits, and the like.

But what about people, single or married, who DON'T have kids?? They really are hit the hardest because they don't have kids to fall back on to make them eligible for EITC, food stamps, Medicaid, WIC, and other state and federal assistance programs i'm not thinking of atm. I am 36 years old, college educated, and essentially living with my parents in their 60's because i cannot find a job that pays a decent enough wage to live independently. Where is the tax help or assistance for people like me? Others in a simiar situation hold jobs at places like WM, grocery stores, fast food eateries, etc.; and we pay bills and taxes but have NO savings, many times NO health insurance, NO prospect of owning our own home, and can barely own a car.

I was very saddened and outraged that people whose income is 9-10 TIMES what mine is pay HALF as much taxes as i pay. I may not have a degree in mathematics; but even i can tell that somebody doesn't know how to add.

Oh mindgirl they can add.... it's just that we don't count as people.. only what little money we can trickle-up does.

If early 70's minimum wage rose with inflation... todays minimum wage would be somewhere around 19.00 an hour.

I would love to know how many media outlets in AR give this story attention at all, and whether or not it was featured or buried.

mindlgrrl, the report doesn't say that they pay HALF as much as you. They actually pay over 10 times what you pay (11.7% of 42k vs. 6.8% of $911k). What the report explains is that their $62k in taxes is a smaller percent of their income than your $5k in taxes is of yours. Not sure, but perhaps Max thinks that an 8% flat tax is the answer.

"If early 70's minimum wage rose with inflation... todays minimum wage would be somewhere around 19.00 an hour."

So a good French Fry chef could take home about $40,000 a year. I could do that.

This is also why the tobacco tax rise was an abomination.. a frontal assault on low and middle income folk.

It wiped out the amount of their federal stimulus in one fell swoop. WHo needs a bunch of faux Dems eating each other (and their constituents) for lunch?

Beebe and many a legislators should be tossed out for that alone.

Thanks for the tobacco tax increase. I have 1 family member and 2 co-workers who are going to live longer because of it.

How do you know that?

Assuming you are going to say they quit... that proves nothing.

And how many people who pay the huge tax increase suffer in other ways, such as poor diet, cut off utilities in heat waves or cold snaps, older dangerous autos.. less or poor insurance coverage, and on and on?

Eureka S., you said this about the tobacco tax: "And how many people who pay the huge tax increase suffer in other ways, such as poor diet, cut off utilities in heat waves or cold snaps, older dangerous autos.. less or poor insurance coverage, and on and on?"

The answer is simple. Stop smoking. Smoking is not a right. Smoking is not necessary to live. Smoking provides nothing useful except to enrich the tobacco companies.

I know it's not easy to stop smoking, but people do it every day. My father did it cold turkey. My father-in-law did. Thousands of others do every year.

>>If government enables a company's employees to live on that company's low wages, the company not only saves a wage increase, but also the employer's half of payroll taxes on the increase.<<

Tip of the ice burg. Consider how much employers save by using "contract labor" where there is no withholding. It's widely practiced and enabled by loose laws, esp in Arkansas, Land of Opportunity.

But what the big boz lose in payroll taxes they more than make up in "dead peasant" life insurance policies.

Congrats Arkansas Legislature, we have now retrograded to about the standard of 1919.

Look who gets sent to the state Legislature: small towns elect small, sawmill bosses for representatives. Often they are a lawyer, or insurance agent and guess who controls them?

Slingerland, does that mean you support the creation of financial hardships for people without the willpower to stop smoking? Whether smoking is a right or necessary to live is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the taxation on smoking is causing undue financial hardships for many smokers who have yet to break the habit.

If we ever begin adding additional taxes for everything dangerous and unnecessary, I can imagine that a lot of opinions would quickly change on this issue.

BH, The common misconception that tobacco taxes are targeting smokers misses the point that the industry actively targets and markets for profit. Tobacco taxes are the public health's best tool for reducing the burden of tobacco related disease. And yes, the cost of which dwarfs even the recently increased taxes. In Arkansas there are plenty of opportunities for a nicotine addict to quit once that individual has committed to becoming tobacco free. Note the 1-800 QUIT NOW number for free cessation help. Not everything dangerous and unnecessary is directly related to obscene profits for multinational corporations. It is the tobacco company profits causing undue hardship not tobacco taxes.

Zara, I am fully aware of the tobacco industry's wrongdoings, but punishing smokers for the tobacco industry's wrongdoings isn't fair. If you're like most people, you likely have a vice that's damaging to the state as well, so why are we not punishing you?

When Democrats support things like this, they remind me far too much of Republicans.

Tobacco companies would have you think tobacco taxes punish smokers because, for one, it draws attention from their culpability for the leading cause of death and disease. But if anything, evidence based tobacco prevention, like increased taxes, benefits those who have not quit yet.

Another reason tobacco companies want to focus on smokers is they prefer to ignore the tremendous addictive nature of nicotine and the genetic predisposition to both addiction and lung cancer. Permissive tobacco policies do no one but the tobacco industry a favor and may well be neglecting an aspect of the population with little defense against predation by the industry. Tobacco propaganda likes to portray tobacco use as all about choice when in fact many of us have inherited metabolites for nicotine that make addiction almost a certainty after an initial use. Cheap tobacco is little more than a subsidy for the tobacco cartel and a truly preventable burden for addicts and certainly their families.

Contemporary tobacco marketing and prevalence is a bizarre historical anomaly warranting sophisticated challenges that are both political and clinical. One reason you see fewer republicans than democrats supporting evidence based effective tobacco prevention is that generally a much greater percentage of tobacco political funding ends up in their hands. But then that's getting off message and i don't like to do that so close to bedtime.

Tobacco taxes are an insignificant aspect of the tax burden to which the article refers.