Readers share views on Kansas taxes, guns in Missouri, Gov. Brownback
Kansas tax review
There has been ongoing discussion and evaluation of the small-business tax policy, which will continue.
Our tax policy has worked where you would expect to see it work. It has allowed many businesses to grow, and 20,000 first-time small business filers have come to Kansas.
These are people and businesses whose Social Security number, name or name of the company has not previously appeared on a Kansas tax return.
Ninety-three percent of the businesses taking advantage of the exemption have a net income of less than $75,000 but have brought more than $1 billion in new income to Kansas and $899 million in taxable income such as wages, capital gains, and dividends and guaranteed payments.
We recognize that people are frustrated and concerned that, while state revenues have been growing annually since fiscal year 2014, collections have not been meeting estimates.
The Brownback administration shares that concern and has assembled an external review team of accountants and bankers to study the Consensus Estimating Process to determine whether we can develop a new more reliable and accurate estimating formula.
The group will present its recommendations to the governor’s office by late October.
Nick Jordan
Kansas Revenue
Secretary
Shawnee
Irresponsible tax
Williamsburg, Va., is like a theme park for American history buffs. You walk through a 16th century village complete with actors in period dress.
If you talk to them, they’ll respond in dialect of the day. So I asked one gentleman what he thought about taxes. He cast a stern eye in my direction and said, “Your tax is your fair share, sir.”
So, we all know about the Boston Tea Party. How does the actor’s comment square with the dumping of tea to protest a tax?
It does because the colonists were not protesting paying a tax. They were protesting a tax levied “without representation.” The king would not allow them representation in Parliament. They had no say in the laws being passed.
This is an important distinction.
Fast-forward to Kansas today. Conservatives are protesting the tax itself.
They, in effect, are the representatives and have voted not to pay the state’s obligations. They are voting against taxes “with representation.”
This has nothing to do with conservatism or any other philosophy. It’s just plain irresponsible.
John Chapman
Gladstone
Helling column
Dave Helling gave a defense of higher taxes in his Sept. 7 column, “Kansans missing the point on taxes.” What he and his colleagues fail to understand is how we commoners view taxes.
We hate paying them because we believe the money is wasted. That goes for all levels of government.
Need examples?
How about $600 million for the Johnson County Gateway Project connecting Interstate 435 and Interstate 35. Or $67 million for the new interchange on I-35 and Lone Elm Road. Or $630 million to operate the University of Kansas, but officials still need higher tuition.
These sums are astronomical and hard for the average voter to comprehend. But we know that the government is wasteful of our money because the government did not have to earn it.
They just taxed us, and we had to fork it over.
Thomas Hardy
Olathe
Override gun veto
On June 12 of this year, a madman stormed into a nightclub in Florida and opened fire, killing 49 people and wounding 53.
Some would use this as an excuse to call on the Missouri legislature to not override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of SB 656, containing constitutional carry legislation.
This despite the fact that the shooter passed an initial background check for his carry permit, another to become an armed guard, waited three days to pick up his handgun and then shot people in a gun-free zone.
Clearly, gun control has failed to stop violent crime.
When the legislature convenes Wednesday, we hope that lawmakers take into consideration the death toll that gun control has enacted on innocent Americans in just the last few years.
Missourians are reasonable and responsible people and deserve the right to be able to defend themselves and their loved ones from violent criminals.
We are calling on the legislature to override the veto of SB 656 because more gun control means more dead innocent citizens, sacrificed on the altar of a failed gun-control agenda.
Curt Frazier
Chairman
Missouri Firearms
Coalition
Fair Grove, Mo.
Kansas mistakes
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and his ultra-conservative minions in the Kansas Legislature are too proud to admit wrongdoing but opt to shift blame to others.
A case in point is that the governor and his ilk have lashed out at the Kansas Supreme Court, blaming it, as Brownback said, for “playing politics with our children’s education.”
Ultimately, the real masters of playing politics with education are the state’s right-wing pols who cooked up the school-financing plan that was found to violate the state constitution.
Who has the power to repeal the reckless tax cuts for 330,000 businesses and farmers in order to restore adequate funding for services and programs, including education?
Rather than admit their culpability in this fiscal mess and fix the problems, our elected leaders have chosen to project blame for their lamebrain actions on the court’s judges, who simply insist that lawmakers follow the state’s constitution.
Ezra Taft Benson once said, “Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right.”
It is past time for Gov. Brownback and the Legislature to do what is right.
Ron Fugate
Overland Park
This story was originally published September 9, 2016 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Readers share views on Kansas taxes, guns in Missouri, Gov. Brownback."