Everything Tax Still Can't Get Support in Conservative Christian County
“The ballot (issue) that’s being circulated in southwest Missouri has a significant amount of exemptions in it, which brings into question how much revenue would be created by this,” he said. “Several areas of concern I have is one, impact on local school districts that are expanding, like in Christian County.”
He said districts depend on state funding, and eliminating the income tax would shrink state resources available to schools. He agrees with Moody that lower-income people “would be substantially impacted by this with a large percentage of seniors living on Social Security and small pensions” and pay no income tax. He said charity organizations depending on tax credits would also suffer.
This week, we're starting to hear from other leaders in Christian County. From the Springfield News-Leader:
Ozark Alderman Eddie Campbell asked how a fair tax would affect city sales taxes.[...]
"I'm definitely not for doing away with income tax... There's something wrong with the other things that go with it."
A Nixa education leader also expressed incredible scepticism of Sinqfield's Everything Tax:
Peggy Taylor of the Nixa Board of Education asked, "With the uncertainty of sales tax and the wide disparity of estimated revenues in rapidly growing school districts, such as Nixa and Ozark, how can schools prepare a budget based on the current foundation formula?"[...]
Taylor then turned to the audience and said, "I have a question for this audience. Why are we as Missourians allowing one billionaire to buy legislators and other elected officials across the state and try to reshape control of our Show Me way of life?"
The billionaire she referred to is Rex Sinquefield, one of the main backers of the fair tax initiative.
Taylor went on to say if people take time to compare the tax they pay with the total amount of tax they would pay with many sales taxes, they would realize it's trading tax for tax, but in the long run it would cost them more.
The more folks learn and hear about the Everything Tax, the more voters dislike it.
