The chump tax

Scan the titles of the 2,950 bills clogging the Legislature’s hopper and one subtle message emerges: the sales tax is for chumps.

Definitions are in order. The sales tax is the largest source of state revenue. Chumps are those without enough sense to have a friend in the Legislature who will exempt them from paying it.

Maine collects some $750 million a year in taxes on goods and services. That’s a lot, but not as much as the amount not collected on goods and services exempt from sales tax — $900 million. Hundreds of exemptions now fill 77 paragraphs in the tax code; compared with other states, the base of Maine’s sales tax is narrow. By the time the 119th Legislature is done, it’s skinny little shadow might touch only those without enough clout to get free pass.

As you review this partial list of the 50-plus proposed new exemptions, remember two things: the sales tax is the only one that affects tourists (notorious users of state services) in any substantial way; and the progressive nature of the sales tax means that those who buy the most expensive stuff pay the most (the soak-the-rich principle).

OK, three things: every dollar not collected in sales tax comes from somewhere else. That somewhere else would be your income or property tax.

The partial list of the proposed exemptions are as follows: horses bought and sold, electricity used in agriculture and aquaculture, adult incontinence undergarments, leased equipment, clothing, household appliances, textbooks, junk food, rented audio gear and furniture, telephone service, telecommunications and internet equipment, digital equipment for television broadcasters, groups that help children with dyslexia or that provide pregnancy counseling. Subtract the value of the trade-in from the tax on new automobiles and firearms (another break for horse-traders). Scrap the meals-and-lodging tax, let those who live in Vacationland pick up the slack.

As lawmakers continue to nickel and dime the revenue source that is most based upon ability to pay, they also continue to shortchange state aid to education and that burden falls squarely on the property taxpayer. The property tax accounts for roughly 40 percent of the average Mainer’s total tax outlay, it is notoriously deficient in taking ability to pay into account and it has increased an average of 9 percent a year during the last decade. If just one fourth of the existing $900 million in sales tax exemptions were eliminated, the state could make good on its broken promises to public schools and bring about tax relief that would truly relieve.

Sen. Richard Ruhlin, chairman of the Taxation Committee, recognizes the problem of creeping — make that galloping — exemptions and wisely calls for a top-to-bottom review of the whole mess. Ruhlin says setting tax policy by exemption is wrong and he is right.

Some exemptions are based upon good intentions. Who can quibble with lending a hand to the elderly suffering from incontinence, to students struggling to pay for absurdly expensive books, to those who work with dyslexic kids or pregnant teens? The bigger issue is whether a 5.5 percent discount is the best Maine can do for these worthy causes, especially when it only whets the exemption appetite of the unworthy. And if the purpose of the various clothing exemptions is to give parents a hand dressing their kids, why not just increase the deduction for dependents on the income tax form? Truly win-win — Maine families get a break and tourists pay full price for those lobster sweatshirts.

Sen. Ruhlin is not the first lawmaker to question the wisdom of Maine’s sales-tax-exemption mania, but there are two reasons he may be the first to succeed in bringing about a rational debate on it: the nature of the proposed exemptions has reached a state of critical silliness; and Maine is running out of chumps.