OPINION: Alaska’s controversial tax history could be headed for a new chapter

Thankfully, this is an election year. So while our reformers camped out in Juneau are constantly conscious of their new, hefty $84,000 pay and $307 per diem, the enraged hoi polloi show up with torches. I avoid the urge to whisper the word “income tax” so that I don’t have to. Pitchfork.

Oh, sure, there’s a whisper here, a murmur there, and apparently some income tax bills that have been stuck at the bottom of the quagmire since last year, but nothing serious.

Let me tell you, there’s plenty of work for legislators to do, including funding and funding education. bicker over energy proposals; Revitalize the economy. I then tried to rearrange the contents of the Permanent Fund and its dividends again.

Furthermore, the absurd fact is that income taxes are a poor idea and just another way to divert hard-earned money to the government and drain money from the public sector economy. Such levies are generally permanent and give lawmakers the green light to spend. You might even give them the keys to your bank. If our elected poobahs raise income taxes on Alaskans this year, they’ll raise them even more next year. After all, they are predictably untrustworthy people.

For years, Alaska lawmakers have demonstrated legendary fiscal recklessness. In the years since 2013, our lawmakers siphoned $16 billion from Alaska’s cash reserves to underwrite its prodigal spending. 16 billion dollars! Would anyone in their right mind specifically give these people your paycheck or endowment dividend?

Alaska once had such a tax, passed by the Alaska Territorial Legislature in 1949. This tax was set at 10% of a taxpayer’s federal income tax liability, which, of course, was something that the tax was relentless about. It grew. By 1975, the tax was changed to progressive, with a top rate of 14.5%.

By 1980, the state realized that oil money was plentiful on the North Slope, and liberals, then living their days in Alaska, got income tax repeal on the 1980 ballot. Republicans and Democrats, unwilling to allow the infiltrators to win, repealed the tax in September of that year in order to get it off the ballot in November. Since then, the Taxes Are Forever left has been crying out about repeal.

There have been periodic attempts to breathe life into Alaska’s income tax, some of them ugly. Then-Governor Bill Walker proposed the tax in 2015. There was an intense legislative effort in 2017 led by a Democratic-led House coalition. The left whimsically named the income tax proposal the “Education Funding Act.” $600 million was supposed to go toward milking Alaskans.

Some of the state’s wealthiest and most powerful residents and businesses participated. They persuaded Alaskans and their legislators to put income taxes back on the books and accept reduced dividends from the Permanent Fund to protect the nation’s wealth. profits, and government contracts. Through all of this, Democrats and their allies argued that ordinary Alaskans support an income tax. A Dittman Research poll of the Alaska Chamber of Commerce at the time belied that claim. It found that 58% of poll respondents who were likely to vote opposed such a tax.

The effort stalled in the Senate, leaving the state one of the few states without such a levy. Shortly after the 2017 fight, Gov. Mike Dunleavy took office and almost immediately proposed three constitutional amendments. Incorporate the calculation of Permanent Fund dividends into the State Constitution. Second, set a spending limit. And one-third prohibits new taxes or rate increases passed by Congress without a vote of the people.

This tax provision would resolve the question of whether Alaskans want an income tax at a given point in time. You may need it someday. Alaskans cannot always expect the best behavior from their elected representatives, but they should have a direct say in their decisions.

It’s not that hard to see why Dunleavy’s tax reform didn’t work. If the right to tax was taken away from the general public, all the fun of being a member of his party would be lost. Additionally, at a time when oil prices were low, the Permanent Fund’s revenue reserve account was in jeopardy, and the state’s savings evaporated, it raised salaries from $50,400 to $84,000 and reduced executive branch salaries to $20,000. Lawmakers who approve a percentage increase are not poster children. And the boys ask for more taxes.

Oh, and by the way, this increase came after the State Salary Setting Board made a bold change by way of public notice. Indeed, lawmakers may be wise to let sleeping dogs lie this election year. But wisely, sorry, that’s not always their strong point.

paul jenkins Former Associated Press reporter, editor-in-chief of the Anchorage Times, editor of the Voice of the Times, and former editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.

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