Tax plan from ‘PLAN’

Nevada liberals have offered lots of reasons (and lots of euphemisms) in their carefully waged campaign to -- ahem -- "overhaul" taxes. They've talked of tax "restructuring" and tax "stabilization," of "reducing abatements" and "enhancing revenues." They've somberly warned that the 144-year-old state must "grow up" and demonstrate "progress," that its citizens must embrace higher tax burdens as evidence of "sophistication" and "compassion."

Now, just in time for Gov. Jim Gibbons' State of the State address tonight, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada has issued its own formal call for a taxation makeover. In a report released Monday, the group claims public finances are "inadequate and inequitable," hammering the poor while letting off big business and the rich.

But the document lays bare the real motivations of PLAN and big-government boosters everywhere. They're not interested in overhauling, restructuring, stabilizing or tuning up the tax system. They're not formulating revenue-neutral solutions that increase predictable revenue streams while decreasing volatile ones.

They just want piles and piles of new money to spend. And they could care less about the tiny tax bill paid by the poor.

The roughly $6 billion, two-year budget Gov. Gibbons is expected to unveil tonight is $2 billion smaller than what legislative Democrats say is needed to maintain state services (and provide additional generous pay raises to state workers), and $3 billion to $5 billion short of what they say is needed to lift Nevada's public schools, colleges and social services above Third-World standards.

There's good reason for the governor's frugality: Nevada's economy has endured a beating worthy of a mixed martial arts card. Consumers are cutting back and businesses are hurting, so the state's flow of tax revenues has slowed considerably.

But in PLAN's world, facts never get in the way of a deeply flawed philosophy. In its report, "Fool's Gold," PLAN advocates a system of taxation that is "responsive to growth in the economy" but generates "stable and consistent revenues." In other words, all was right when tax collections grew even faster than the state's population and economy (combined), but even though both are now in reverse, the revenue is supposed to keep gushing in. There is no sane system of taxation that can accomplish this (see editorial below).

PLAN maintains that the state's reliance on sales and gaming levies -- which tax voluntary, elective transactions, not necessities such as food, medicine and utilities -- punishes the poor. Never mind that this tax structure has helped fuel four decades of booming growth.

But PLAN's report doesn't propose anything that would reduce taxes for the poor, such as eliminating sales taxes on clothing, toiletries and household supplies. Rather, PLAN's sleight-of-hand scheme claims to reduce their burden by increasing taxes and creating new ones that target businesses and "the rich," making the levies paid by lower-income Nevadans a smaller slice of a much larger pie. Worse, PLAN supports increasing already-high alcohol and tobacco taxes, two levies that hit low-income households especially hard. This, according to PLAN, is much more fair to the poor.

For legislative Democrats, PLAN, their fans in the public sector and their enablers in the media, it's time for a little honesty: There's no such thing as an "adequate" tax structure, and there's no such thing as "adequate" funding for public education and welfare schemes. They will never, ever have enough of the public's money to spend on their vision of "social justice."

Which is why beleaguered businesses and taxpayers have had just about enough of them.