GOP: Increasing Taxes for the Poor and Cutting Them for the Affluent

While a few national level Republicans - mostly disingenuous would be GOP presidential candidates - are feigning concern over growth wealth disparity, at the state level, GOP controlled legislatures are showing the real GOP agenda: raising taxes on the poor while cutting them for the wealthy.  It's the same old reverse Robin Hood scheme that has defined the GOP for some time now. If Hillary Clinton is looking for ways to slam whoever her GOP challenger may be, perhaps mapping out and exposing these efforts can be a part of it.  The New York Times as details on the GOP's sick agenda.  Here are excerpts:

A number of Republican-led states are considering tax changes that in many cases would have the effect of cutting taxes on the rich and raising them on the poor.

Conservatives are known for hating taxes but particularly hate income taxes, which they say have a greater dampening effect on growth. Of the 10 or so Republican governors who have proposed tax increases, nearly all have called for increases in consumption taxes, which hit the poor and middle class harder than the rich.

Favorite targets for the new taxes include gas, e-cigarettes, and goods and services in general. . . . At the same time, some of those governors — most notably Mr. LePage, Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina and John R. Kasich of Ohio — have proposed significant cuts to their state income tax.

A new report suggests that these states could be creating financial problems down the road. The strategy of shifting from income taxes to consumption taxes has caused huge budget shortfalls in Kansas and, more recently, North Carolina, which announced a budget shortfall of nearly half a billion dollars.

Taxing the top fifth of earners at the same rate as the middle class would bring in $200.5 billion to state and local coffers, the report says. Taxing just the top 1 percent at the same rate as the middle class would bring in $88.5 billion, 10 times the amount needed to restore five years’ worth of cuts to higher education. The report also breaks it down state by state, saying that Texas and Florida, at the top of the list, would raise about $40 billion each if they taxed the top 20 percent at the middle-class rate, while Kansas and North Carolina would raise about $2 billion each.

“If more money’s flowing to the top, and the top folks are taxed at lower rates, inevitably that’s a problem for state budgets.”