In a column posted today on the South Dakota Republican Party’s website, Sioux Falls State Representative John Hughes is promoting massive increases on taxes for businesses as well as increasing taxes on individuals.
This might be a trial balloon which shows the hand of the more hard right members of the legislature on the proposals they want to bring to raise taxes on the construction industry, business owners, and.. well everyone to offset the tinkering they want to do with South Dakota’s property tax system:
The Governor says very little in these 19 recommendations impresses him. He proposes to lower property taxes by authorizing counties to enact an optional sales tax. But increasing sales tax is a Band-Aid, when surgery is needed to fix our broken taxing system.
The good news is that real reform is possible IF our Governor and Legislature have the political will to enact it and can stand strong against the blowback from the special interests and their lobbyists affected by this reform.
For example, the following rather simple four-pronged approach would, if passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor, result in $275 million raised in tax revenue that could be applied to property tax relief for our homeowner citizens:
1) Eliminate the sales tax exemption for advertising and radio and television broadcasting. RESULT – $46 million could be applied to property tax relief
2) Raise the Contractors’ Excise Tax from 2% to 3%. RESULT – $112 million could be applied to property tax relief.
3) Eliminate the sales tax exemption for vaping. RESULT – $7.3 million could be applied to property tax relief.
4) Restore the state sales tax rate back to 4.5% now, instead of waiting until 2027. RESULT – $111 million could be applied to property tax relief.
You can read how Rep. Hughes justifies his advocacy to increase taxes on businesses, construction, and the everyday taxpayer here.
What do you think – should homebuilders and others in the construction industry have taxes raised on them by 50%? Should the legislature oppose President Trump’s efforts against advertising taxes? Should sales tax go up?
Given the state of the economy, I’m not sure South Dakotans are going to get very excited about proposals to kill development and increase taxes on themselves.
Not at all.
Almost every single proposal is a variation of robbing Peter to pay Paul, which tells me the system in place isn’t that bad. Not perfect, but also not bad. Make a few small tweaks to the mill rates in spots and set some income guidelines for vulnerable individuals and keep working towards other solutions.
Agreed. As I read each one, the other side of the teeter totter goes down with someone being impacted and costs just passed on to us the consumers except possibly advertising. Don’t know enough about that. Vaping could be a start as that is a complete personal choice.
Gotta start somewhere so I appreciate Hughes’ effort.
Hughes is nothing but a failed ambulance chaser who took his “target the pockets which are deepest” approach to the law into the legislature with him and is bamboozling the lesser minds therein into thinking he’s Judge Posner.