We all need a little help from time to time, some more than and more
often than others, and it’s the Baton
Rouge Advocate in need this time. Much as a kindergartner needs assistance
in understanding 2+2=4, the editorialists at the paper require aid to
comprehend why Gov. Bobby
Jindal vetoed a series of laws that could have continued the tax on
automobile rentals across the state. Let’s see what we can do to remove them
from their confusion.
The expiring
law, first enacted in 1990 but extended several times since, allowed
levying of a three percent tax on short-term rentals that were not replacement
vehicles subject to a repair of another, of which one-half percent would be
remitted back to the parish. Four bills passed to try to keep the local portion
on the books, three identifying certain parishes and the other general to the
state.
The Advocate got stumped because
Jindal wrote he vetoed them because he pledged not to “raise taxes,” while it
argued that this was a tax “renewal” at the same local or aggregate amount,
stating “If
it’s a renewal, it’s not raising a tax, by definition. It’s keeping it where it
exists.” Further, it argued that, as the
mechanism in all cases was to provide a local option election to impose the tax,
this gave the tax added validity as the people would choose whether to put it
upon themselves. Then, somewhat contradictorily, it also tried to provide validation
of it by saying local citizens would pay next to none of it anyway. Finally, it
defines Jindal’s actions as hypocritical because he has permitted revenue-raising
actions, such as on college tuition and other agency fees, to go forward based
upon fee-for-service models, but not on what it calls tax “renewals.”
Such objections tell us two things about the Advocate’s editorialists: they don’t think very logically, and they
are ignorant of the state’s Constitution. Correction of this first point in the
previous sentence disposes easily of the last objection of the previous
paragraph: a fee, which bears relationship to the form and cost of a service
performed, is different from a tax, which is an amount unrelated both in form
to and cost of service of an activity.
For example, the state subsidizes considerably the actual cost of a
college education, justified by the state’s interest in having a well-educated
populace. But by far the biggest beneficiaries of this arrangement are the
actual recipients of the subsidization, for obvious reasons. Therefore, making
them pay more than they do currently for the actual costs of this benefit not
only is entirely appropriate, but also moral in the sense that there needs to
be proportionality in the benefit to the state should not exceed what it pays.
Regardless, it is not a tax increase, and while the Advocate objects that “he raises state revenue by indirection,” in fact it tries
to corrupt the argument about this issue through misdirection by trying to
assert this equates Jindal’s actions to hypocrisy.
It also founders logically in that
some of the bills praised would “renew” only at a half percent. So how can “renewal”
of an aggregate three percent tax actually drop it to an aggregate on one-half
percent? Only if we conceptually treat the tax that would have taken effect
after Jul. 1 as a new tax, meaning it’s not a “renewal” but an old tax of three
percent dropping off to be replaced by a new tax at one-half percent, does this
describe logically this situation.
And we would not be alone in accepting
this as the proper conceptualization, because that’s the same one as in the
Louisiana Constitution. Where the Advocate
truly misses the point is its failure to understand the rationale behind the convoluted
nature of the bills – the local option – where in fact it tries to make a
virtue of this vice. Why didn’t lawmakers simply “renew” the tax as it was; why
introduce this whole idea of local option for the half-percent in some of the
bills, or to give them the entire three percent as in one? Was it because of
generosity of legislators, who thought they ought to give the people say in
direct elections if they were going to have this kind of tax made permanent?
Actually not, for the real reason
is much crasser than that. It’s because any other arrangement would have
violated Art. III Sec. 2
of the Constitution, where paragraph (A)(3)(b) states “No measure levying or authorizing a new tax by the
state or by any statewide political subdivision whose boundaries are
coterminous with the state; increasing an existing tax by the state or by any
statewide political subdivision whose boundaries are coterminous with the
state; or legislating with regard to tax exemptions, exclusions, deductions or
credits shall be introduced or enacted during a regular session held in an
even-numbered year.”
Smarter readers than the Advocate
editorialists will note this passage states nothing about a tax “renewal.” That’s
because the jurisprudence of the Louisiana Constitution defines that once a temporary
tax rolls of the books, any reimposition of it makes it a new tax. Thus, in
order for this kind of legislation to be constitutional, its authors had to
find a way to make the bills not about state or local governments imposing a
new tax, but about giving local electorates the chance to impose it upon
themselves. In other words, it was a way to try to dodge the Constitution.
Regardless, the legislation authorizes local governments to call for a
new tax using the same conceptualization present in the Constitution. Jindal
said he was against new taxes. Unless you come up short in your ability to
reason and/or in your knowledge of the Louisiana Constitution – maladies apparently
suffered by the Advocate
editorialists – there is nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in Jindal’s
actions. He stopped an attempt that would have allowed for new taxes on state
residents.
3 comments:
I feel shame on behalf of Jeff when I read these puff pieces for Jindal. Alternating between gushing praise for his dearest leader, on one hand, and lashing out at anyone who questions Jindal on the other. This is truly like reading Pravda articles about Soviet leaders in that era. Can you just imagine the hysterical squeals that will come from Shreveport if Jindal gets pulled into national politics?
Jeff Sadow and Rolfe McCollister kiss Jindal's ass and go after any of his critics much like NBC and MSNBC does for Barack Obama.
Oh, wow!
Is there anyone out there that buys this stuff?
Anyone?
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