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Casinos or a penny increase in the sales tax?
By adamg on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 9:20am
Both might raise the same amount of money, but we know which one the DiMasi-less legislative leadership prefers.
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Comments
Can you explain "a penny on
Can you explain "a penny on the sales tax?" The sales tax is a rate, not an amount.
One per cent
QED
Actually, that's a 20% increase
Not to be a nit, but I think we all understand that the rate would go up to 6%. That's actually a 20% increase.
Admittedly, there's no easy way to say this other than saying "increasing the sales tax to 6%". You can try to take a short-cut by saying "adding a penny" or "increasing by 1%" ,and we can all assume what those mean even though they're not accurate.
Numerical conspiracy
The worst part is that if they then lowered it back to 5% again, they'd only get a 16.7% reduction in the rate.
It's a goddamn librul conspiracy, I tells ya. We're all gettin robbed.
Not to be a nit, but I think
Exactly. Twenty percent sounds rather different than "a penny," as the person who wrote it well knows.
In any case, raising the sales tax doesn't add jobs, and it doesn't keep people from spending their money out of state. If gambling as a source of state income is a bad thing, then let's start by shutting down the lottery. Economists who study gambling have shown that lotteries are more regressive than casinos. The reason casinos have been blocked all these years is that the Legislature wouldn't be able to get their hands on the jobs at the private casinos like they can at the Lottery.
Exactly
And that's why politicians like to say "1 percent" or "a penny" rather than the real impact - a 20% increase in sales tax.