Why Nevadans should support a tax increase

Jim Weber, Mesquite

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 | 2:06 a.m.

I don’t like paying taxes any more than the next person, but it seems inevitable that some form of tax increase will be needed to maintain even a reasonably scaled-down level of state governmental services.

In Nevada, we have a state tax system that is geared toward extracting a good portion of our tax revenue from nonresidents. These include room taxes, rental car taxes, gaming taxes, sales taxes and motor fuel taxes. We have become accustomed to visitors paying for a large chunk of our state government operations, keeping taxes low for Nevada residents. This is no longer working for us during the current recession.

Any tax increases proposed by the state Legislature will, undoubtedly, lead to much weeping and wailing, but I think we need to look at it another way. First, we are all in this together and few of us are going to totally escape the effects of this recession. Second, Nevada is our state and our home. We are educating our children, driving on our roads and highways, and receiving police and fire protection, to name just a few benefits.

It is not asking too much for us to dig a little deeper and express our independence by accepting more responsibility for ourselves and the well-being of our neighbors.