This is the final part of three-part series running this week on Third and State.
On Wednesday, we highlighted the flaws in a Wall Street Journal editorial that was caught being, shall we say, less than truthful in its presentation of data on taxes.
Then, yesterday we wrote about conservatives here in Harrisburg, like the Commonwealth Foundation’s Nathan Benefield and Jonathan Humma, who want to make the case that Pennsylvania’s business climate is bad because of taxes, ergo we should cut corporate taxes and shift more of the tax burden away from the wealthy and onto the rest of us.
Richard Florida has a piece at the Atlantic reviewing the relationship between “business tax competitiveness” and various measures of state level economic performance where he concludes:
The bottom line is this: Lower state investment tax burdens aren’t associated with stronger state economies, and higher investment tax burdens aren’t associated with worse ones. Tax cuts may be an effective political strategy and lowering business and investment taxes may appeal to corporate interests and attract campaign contributions, but they have little relation to state economies.
And don’t forget that in Pennsylvania, middle-income taxpayers already pay more of their income in state and local taxes than the wealthy do.
This all reminds me of a great Upton Sinclair quote:
It’s difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!
This is the final part of three-part series running this week on Third and State.
On Wednesday, we highlighted the flaws in a Wall Street Journal editorial that was caught being, shall we say, less than truthful in its presentation of data on taxes.
Then, yesterday we wrote about conservatives here in Harrisburg, like the Commonwealth Foundation’s Nathan Benefield and Jonathan Humma, who want to make the case that Pennsylvania’s business climate is bad because of taxes, ergo we should cut corporate taxes and shift more of the tax burden away from the wealthy and onto the rest of us.
Richard Florida has a piece at the Atlantic reviewing the relationship between “business tax competitiveness” and various measures of state level economic performance where he concludes:
The bottom line is this: Lower state investment tax burdens aren’t associated with stronger state economies, and higher investment tax burdens aren’t associated with worse ones. Tax cuts may be an effective political strategy and lowering business and investment taxes may appeal to corporate interests and attract campaign contributions, but they have little relation to state economies.
And don’t forget that in Pennsylvania, middle-income taxpayers already pay more of their income in state and local taxes than the wealthy do.
This all reminds me of a great Upton Sinclair quote:
It’s difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!