There are several noteworthy policies and policy choices that have marked the last decade and a half of Republican control of North Carolina state government. Nonstop attacks on voting rights. Relentless gerrymandering. The crusade against racial diversity, equity and inclusion. Hostility to immigrants and LGBTQ people. Repeated efforts to limit reproductive freedom and women’s rights more generally. The slow and steady demise of K-12 public education and the rise of a corrupt and unaccountable multi-billion-dollar private school voucher cartel. The war on academic freedom in higher education. Eroding access to healthcare. The evisceration of unemployment insurance and the social safety net. Head-in-the-sand denials of the climate crisis.
But if there is a single, defining, and arguably most destructive priority that has dominated GOP policymaking these past 15 years, it is the ongoing effort to remake the system for funding government.
To hear the authors and architects of the alterations made to North Carolina’s tax structure during this period, the entire endeavor has been about “letting North Carolinians keep more of their money” and “forcing government to live within its means.” According to this narrative, state government was and is a naturally rapacious creature that’s staffed mostly by inefficient and overpaid bureaucrats bent on micromanaging the lives of their neighbors while clinging to cushy jobs.
NC voters set to weigh in on limiting state income tax and property taxes in November
Even as recently as last week, after several years of dramatic tax and budget cuts that have slashed overall public investments as a share of the state’s total economy by more than a third, Republican state Representative and Finance Committee chair Keith Kidwell claimed on the House floor that in North Carolina, “we tax people into oblivion.”
Kidwell’s claim is, of course, utter nonsense. In general, and in comparison to much of the rest of the country and the free world, North Carolinians are taxed quite lightly. This is especially true for wealthy individuals and profitable corporations. Our threadbare schools and gulag-like prisons bear stark testament to this reality every day.
Unfortunately, as is the case with many other policy decisions pursued by politicians of the right during the 21st Century – particularly during the Trump era – there are also some small kernels of truth in the GOP assessment of where things stand and have stood. For instance, it’s true that many people of low and moderate incomes are and have been unfairly taxed, and that, in many areas, state government can and should do a better job of providing public services.
The problem, however, is that, as is so frequently the case with the Carnival-Barker-in-Chief in Washington, while the arguments and policies advanced by Republican leaders tap into overall societal discontent and purport to address flaws in the current system, their real-world effect is to feed a vicious cycle of decline and ever-increasing inequality.
The new slate of constitutional amendments to the state tax system making their way toward the fall ballot are a classic case in point. As I noted in this space a couple of weeks back, the GOP proposal to cap local property tax rates has an obvious and superficial appeal, but will, in the long run, further undermine public schools and place more pressure on local governments to raise regressive user fees.
Meanwhile, the proposed amendment to further reduce the state cap on income taxes will have a similarly negative impact. As analysts at the nonpartisan North Carolina Budget & Tax Center explained in an on-point fact sheet last month:
“A limit on the income tax rate won’t keep total state and local taxes low. In reality, states with income tax limits or no income tax tend to rely more on sales taxes, property taxes, and fees to fund the programs and services that are necessary to move our communities forward. Already, North Carolina’s overall tax code is regressive, asking the greatest share of the lowest income households in state and local taxes than the wealthiest households.”
In other words, in a state in which the wealthiest 1% already pay, as a share of their income, only just over half of what low- and middle-income residents pay in taxes, additional cuts to income tax rates will just make the system that much more regressive, while further eroding support for core public services and structures – public schools, roads, healthcare, public safety – that help make middle-class life sustainable.
Happily, there are some encouraging indications that voters across the nation of many different stripes and persuasions may be catching on to this deceptive tax scam. As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reported last month, several states and localities are witnessing a wave of new proposals to tax the superrich who have been the chief beneficiaries of Republican state and federal income tax cuts.
Indeed, as with some of the other regressive policy proposals pushed through the General Assembly of late, one gets the sense that North Carolina Republican leaders see the wave headed their way and are advancing the constitutional amendment binge to protect their wealthy patrons by building a wall against progressive change that voters will soon demand.
This fall’s elections will go a long way toward determining just how high that wall will be and whether it will enable the scam to continue.
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