It slices! It dices! It provides tax relief!
By HOWARD TROXLER
Published April 24, 2007
In my dream I was standing in a supermarket aisle under a big sign saying, "Florida Tax Reform Plans."
There was a woman in a booth there. She was scooping something out of a bizarre-looking carton into a bunch of little plastic cups.
"Sir, try our House of Representatives Brand Tax Reform!" she chirped.
"What's in it?" I asked.
"It's a two-step program," she said. "First, we cut your local taxes, and we cap their annual growth."
"What's the second step?"
"Well, we pass an amendment to the state Constitution. And that has two parts ..."
"Wait. Your second step has two steps, too?"
"Right. If our amendment passes, it will get rid of part of your school taxes. We'll replace that with a 1-cent increase in the state sales tax."
"Then what?"
"Every county will then have its own election, to decide whether to get rid of the rest of school property taxes on their homes."
I held up a hand. "Get rid of all taxes on homes only?"
"Homes only," she said. "But remember, we whacked everybody's tax in the first step."
She said there was one more thing. If a county's voters got rid of all their property taxes on homes, then they would add yet another 1.5 cents of sales tax.
"I can't keep up," I said. "State and local sales tax is 7 cents on the dollar in a lot of places, now, right?"
She said that was right.
"So if we added up to 2.5 cents on the dollar, that would be as much as 9.5 cents in total, right? That seems like a pretty big tax incr-"
Before I could say "tax increase" she clapped her hands over her ears and started going, "Nah nah nah nah nah."
I gave up and pushed my shopping cart around the corner. There was another booth and a guy scooping something out of a plain-looking white carton. He held up a sample.
"Senate Brand Tax Reform, sir?" he asked.
"What's in it?"
"A moderate rollback of your property taxes. A cap on future annual increases."
I asked what else.
"Not much else. Extra help for first-time home buyers," he said. "And help for people selling one home and buying another, so they don't get the 'sticker shock' of a big new tax bill all at once."
"Do you have a second step involving sales taxes?"
He assured me there was not. "At Senate Brands, that seems to us to be risky and complicated. We're sticking to cutting property taxes."
I said I kind of liked the Senate's brand better and put it in my cart. From over in the next aisle I heard the House woman hissing, "Wimp!"
"You guys really ought to get together and agree," I told the Senate guy.
"You're telling me," he sighed. "We're in merger talks, but the House folks are pretty stubborn."
"I heard that," the House woman said from the next aisle. "You're the one who's being stubborn."
"Only," the Senate said, "because we don't want a sales tax incr-"
"Nah nah nah nah nah!" the House cried.
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