More Immediate and Difficult Action Required of Pence than a "Tax Conference"
June 29, 2014
Except for Pence’s need to appear as if he is “leading” on
fiscal issues at a recent “tax conference” for his potential presidential run,
it is puzzling why he did not start holding these after he was sworn in. Dan Carden of the Northwest Indiana Times
wrote a balanced summary on June 24, 2014 of initial reactions from the
conference.
Carden quoted
Pence stating: "A well-designed tax structure
should be simple, it should be stable, it should be transparent and it should
be fair. It should reward hard work, encourage investment and job growth…It
needs to provide stable revenues for all levels of government, but also allow
our families to keep as much of their hard-earned dollars as possible."
Many
deductions, exemptions, “add-backs” and “carve-outs” Carden referred to were enacted
either (1) to promote investment or purchasing behavior to stimulate industries
and job growth, or (2) a powerful lobbyist or CEO made a “phone call” resulting
in “eleventh hour” amendments passed by the General Assembly. Since those making the “phone call” demanding
breaks are still around and are being solicited for donations by Pence’s people
like fundraiser Marty Obst (see John
Bales’ “failed scheme to help the children” of Elkhart) and by caucuses of both
political parties from the House and the Senate, do not expect any meaningful changes
in our tax regulations.
Worrying
about the number of deductions and
exemptions misses the point. We may need
fewer or more deductions targeted to
help our economy. For our system to be “fair”
and “transparent”, each deduction, credit or exemption needs to be examined individually for its impact on investment,
purchasing, job creation and revenues, regardless of who asked for it.
Indiana’s
future tax policies are impacted by how we have spent revenues collected in the
past and our outstanding obligations. Pence
inherited the “morning after” Mitch Daniels’ ‘fraternity party’ full of ‘hung-over’
corporate donors intoxicated by the IEDC slush fund, massive tax credits,
failed privatizations and schemes to “help the children”, bent IDOA procurement
rules and INDOT regulations designed for vendors to run up the bill per
project. Now that the “money is spent”,
Pence is stuck with the bill and cleaning up after Daniels’ party. As he is not the ‘creative’ social chairman of
“Mu Epsilon Delta” fraternity house Daniels was, I hope Pence has the courage
not to turn a blind eye by “living off campus” either. Unless Pence can ‘find’ more money his
predecessor ‘lost’, he needs to be the “Dean” by taking a hard look at every
deduction, do meaningful due diligence before handing out money to corporations
in the future and tell some ‘party-goers’ its time to clean up, grow up and reasonably
curb their appetite.
Opinion
by Charlie White
