TAX NEWS - JUNE 2010

Maine Tax: Make a stand and vote 'yes' on No. 1

by Gary Beers, 05 June 2010 -- We don't have to take the rut-stuck, wrong-path incumbents any longer. We don't need to passively allow party do-nothings continue their intervention in our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. It is time, as with the walrus, to speak of voters speaking and government listening.

People's veto: "Do you want to reject the new law that lowers Maine's income tax and replaces that revenue by making changes to the sales tax?"

Mostly I do favor user-type fees (sales tax, pay as you throw) over broad-based take-more-from-the-rich taxation, but this law is not what it seems.

These sales to be taxed disproportionately impact our largest industry (tourism) while the favored few escape. It is fair to me to pay for what you use. It is unfair to spread pain unequally. Private enterprise is the true font from which all our blessings flow. Without profit there is no business. Without business, no jobs and no taxes.

The income tax phantasm looks more like a ghost-lowering of percentage while removing direct deductions for "credits" that look to be difficult to qualify for. Lowering the percent, but increasing the taxable base means higher taxes to pay.

There are questions for $26.5 million supporting offshore wind research and energy efficiency; $47.8 million transportation bond to preserve rail assets in Aroostook County and improvements to ports and highways; $23.75 million community economic development, including conversion of Brunswick NAS; and $10.25 million to fund water quality projects and wastewater management infrastructure.

Kittery taxpayers paid for the town's own windmill initiative. It failed. Kittery users paid for their own water and sewer systems. North-East gets our tax dollars to pay for theirs. Kittery has had no "economic development" funding outside our own pockets. We profit the old-fashioned way, we earn it. Now they'd tax an economic lifeline and take away a bridge that provides its sustenance.

Most galling: Maine's half of the cost to take care of our bridges to "preserve rail assets." An all too usual nothing-but-political-power stimulus? On a track to nowhere bound to fail?

Memorial Bridge is Maine's "priority" number 286. Take it away, add more tax to area businesses, and the money to pay for 1-285 is diminished. And our not-too-big businesses are made to fail. But if "their" pet taxpayer-paid project gets funded, why should they care?

They don't. I do. I think you do as well. I beg you to make with me the firmest stand-up ballot statement ever made in Maine. All of York and Cumberland unenrolled say yes on 1 and no to the rest. Party people, please join us, on a new path to balance and get us back our own paid for equity.

By the way, my name will be on the ballot for House District 151, unenrolled and independent, on Nov. 2.