South Dakota’s teetering economy may be pushing our legislators toward thinking about rebalancing our fiscal stool with the missing third leg of state income tax. Check out Senator Jeff Partridge’s (R-34/Rapid City) slight concession to tax fairness at Saturday’s Chamber crackerbarrel in Rapid City:
A projected budget shortfall and taxes dominated the discussion. One questioner asked whether it’s time to consider a personal and corporate income tax in South Dakota, given the state’s budget shortfall.
Partridge said he does not support an income tax at this time but that the idea is going to have to be considered, along with budget cuts or possibly increasing sales tax [Jennifer Naylor Gesick, “Crackerbarrel Discusses State Income Tax, Laws to Crackdown {sic} on Protestors,” Rapid City Journal, 2017.03.05].
No one filed an income tax bill this year; had such a bill popped up, Senator Partridge says he wouldn’t vote for it. But just getting a Republican to say he’d consider an income tax as a solution to our flagging revenues is a noteworthy step toward a more progressive tax system.
As long as they think they can get away with raising sales tax and property tax there is no way Republicans will come close to an income tax. Corporate and individual income taxes would have the rich and business in SD coming closer to paying their fair share, Republicans won’t allow that to happen.
The one nice thing about property tax is that it brings in a lot of out of state money. In the case of land tax it also gets a bit from those who inherited the land and just take their check every year while doing nothing for it. I say raise the commercial and ag rates again and then give a deduction for South Dakota residents who are actively farming or running their business.
Why worry about an income tax when you can raise the sales tax higher and gouge people on food. Both parties thought that was a great move last year.
Some would call it gouging, others would call it being realistic.
I have lived in two states…Minnesota and Ohio…and paid a personal income tax in both states. It was not intrusive, and I felt better about paying a progressive tax than letting the rich dodge the bullet, as they continue to do in South Dakota.
This one came up at the Aberdeen cracker barrel too and they at least admitted that while the “citizens were totally against it in 2004” maybe it might be a discussion worth having. There was still a lot of the ideology of “taxes take MY STUFF and give it to other other people” though, which I admittedly have never understood. Maybe it’s because I spent 20 years paying state income taxes before I moved to SD or maybe it’s because I honestly believe in taxes as a part of social good but, especially in a rural area, I don’t get how people believe their taxes go to anywhere but to things like roads people drive on, schools, emergency services, and so forth. It’d be one thing to complain about that if you lived in a larger city (bigger tax bases mean that some of the money from cities flows to rural areas among other things) but the chance of of actually seeing (and using!) the visible impact of your tax dollars is far greater in rural areas — of which Aberdeen is definitely one. I’ve never been able to have this conversation with a fiscal conservative who managed an argument beyond “NO IT’S MINE” or references to long-debunked dog whistles like “welfare queens.”
Both parties thought that was a great move last year.
Greg, I believe you are seriously misrepresenting half of the equation. Dems went along with it because it seemed to be the only way to get a raise in pay for teachers in a wingnut controlled state.
While wingnuts continuously spit out false, inflated numbers for tax collections-Dems actually tried to help get South Dakota off the bottom of the pay rank in America. And I don’t believe many of them cared for the way it was done, but it got done.
it has been said that if we dems don’t bring it up we might as well go home. its the premier issue for us
Well, we could save the state some moolah by getting rid of the house, senate and governor. Anything of importance could be determined at the ballot box.
Lets see, last year got trans gender bathrooms hashed out and this year got guns in the state house. Oh yeah….the best way to kill IM 22 so that it would never see the light of day again.
I think the citizens could accomplish more!
With the new GOP Health Care Plan, conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt just said that states that had not adopted medicare expansion were going to be hurt.
What would it have meant to the SD budget if Governor Daugaard would have accepted expansion? What will it mean going forward?
As the GOP fights through it’s ideological reasoning for spending, they make choices. Choices that need to be examined.