Soaking the Poor in Kentucky

The General Assembly is definitely going to monkey with the tax system before adjourning in April; the only question is how much the resulting unfairness will strip off the hides of the poor in order to further fatten our obscenely rich.

Linda Blackford at the Herald:

A new report from the University of Kentucky says Kentucky's tax code should broaden its base to get a more stable system.

It's the latest in a long line of research that says Kentucky should align its tax code more with areas of economic growth.

The authors say the current structure lacks "buoyancy," a description of how well state revenue keeps pace with the economy. During the past 40 years, there's been a gradual decline in that rate.

Co-author William Hoyt, an economics professor and director of UK's Martin School, said the reason for the long-term gradual decline is that a smaller share of income is spent on tangible goods, which are taxed, and a larger share is spent on services, which are not.

The measure of buoyancy would be helped by matching the tax code to a more modern economy that taxes services, which encompass anything from dry cleaning and limousine rentals to legal services.

Meanwhile, Kentucky's working poor continue to subsidize the wealthy.

Kevin Drum:

And then there are state taxes. Those include state income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and fees of various kinds. How progressive are state taxes?

Answer: They aren't. The Corporation for Enterprise Development recently released a scorecard for all 50 states, and it has boatloads of useful information. That includes overall tax rates, where CFED's number crunchers conclude that in the median state (Mississippi, as it turns out) the poorest 20 percent pay twice the tax rate of the top 1 percent. In the worst states, the poorest 20 percent pay five to six times the rate of the richest 1 percent. Lucky duckies indeed. There's not one single state with a tax system that's progressive. Click the link to see how your state scores.

Kentucky's poorest citizens pay 9.4 percent of their tiny incomes in taxes. Kentucky's rich motherfuckers - oops, sorry to be redundant - on their obscenely huge incomes pay an insultingly tiny 6.1 percent.

Hey, worthless members of Beshear's fake "tax reform committee:" a good place to start would be reversing that ratio.