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AZ flat tax dead… for now

by on Mar. 30, 2011, under Arizona, Arizona Legislature, Democratic Party, Jan Brewer, Republican Party, taxes, Tea Party, Tucson

Hurray for an informed citizenry!

Rep. Steve Court (R-Mesa) has withdrawn his proposal for an Arizona flat tax, which would have raised taxes on all Arizonans making less than $100,000 and lowered taxes on everyone making more than that amount.

Court’s flat tax sailed through the Arizona House with only Democrats voting against it. It also passed a Senate panel recently– again with only Democratic opposition. I, for one, thought that Arizonans were about to be seriously screwed by the Legislature, but according to Court, he pulled the legislation because he got calls and questions from voters. Yes!

Unfortunately, Teapublicans like Court don’t give up easily. According to the Arizona Daily Star, he is going to put lipstick on that pig and come up with a spin campaign to dupe voters …er… rewrite the bill and educate the electorate about the value of taxing the working class, while letting the rich keep 40% more cash.

I agree that Arizona’s tax structure needs an overhaul, but my graduated tax plan would have added more tax brackets in the upper income levels– thus increasing taxes on the wealthy– and would have added more corporate tax brackets. (As you know, the Arizona Legislature and Governor Jan Brewer already increased corporate welfare by decreasing the corporate tax rate.)

For more details on the temporary demise of the flat tax, here’s a link to the Star article.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 6:36 am and is filed under Arizona, Arizona Legislature, Democratic Party, Jan Brewer, Republican Party, taxes, Tea Party, Tucson. Tags for this post: , , , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • Tim

    I believe this author is dumber than shit.  Adding more tax brackets isn’t more effecient since the standard deduction makes the interest rate increase gradually on every dollar more that you earn.   A person making 20K a year gets taxed on 10K which cuts the flat rate in half.  A person making a 100K a year gets taxed on 90K thus increasing the total percent taken out of their pay.   Math is simple (accept for the writer of the article)-2% of 10K versus 2% of 90K.  The effective tax rate for each income is not 2% since you have a standard tax deduction.

  • Dave Patrick

    The guy making 20K will be figuring how they are going to feed, cloth and house themselves without the additional tax. The guy making the 100K probably will not miss the few extra dollars, I make about 150K a year and I know I don’t. Maybe we need to wonder how hungry that person that is performing all of those personal services around you for 8 or 10 dollars and hour gets before he decides the hell with it and decides to get a gun (easy in this state) and take what you have plenty of. Free enterprise is by no means fair and a progressive tax structure helps even out the bumps a little unless you prefer class warfare as history has taught us is certain result of your flat tax idea.

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The Tucson Progressive

Pamela Powers Hannley writes the Tucson Progressive blog on the TucsonCitizen.com and contributes articles to the Huffington Post and Salon.com. She has had more than 30 years of experience in written, visual, and electronic communication—including freelance writing, photography, graphic design, and consulting. In addition to blogging for the Citizen, she is the Managing Editor of an international medical research journal.

Hannley has authored medical research articles, print magazine and newspaper stories, and numerous cancer prevention and self-help publications.

She has been a blogger since 2006, joined the ranks of Tucson Citizen bloggers in October 2010, and started contributing to the Huffington Post in 2011 and to Salon.com in 2012.

Hannley holds a masters’ degree in public health from The University of Arizona and a bachelors’ degree in journalism from The Ohio State University. She is a native of Amherst, Ohio but has lived in Tucson since 1981.