Paying for services

Monday, Feb. 21, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

Under the influence of the Tea Party, many Republicans are caught in the spell of the “no new taxes” mantra. To hear some of them tell it, they’ve never met a tax they would support — ever.

It has become heresy in many conservative circles to talk of increasing taxes. Instead of considering any sort of tax increase, government should be cutting, Republicans say. After all, people wouldn’t stand for a tax increase in this economy.

Or would they?

As Sun columnist Jon Ralston reported on his blog and in his Flash e-mail newsletter, Republican pollster Glen Bolger last week released a poll for the Retailers Association of Nevada that showed different.

Asked if they thought Gov. Brian Sandoval and the Legislature should raise taxes instead of cutting services such as education and health care, 52 percent said raise taxes, compared with 37 percent who said cut. Although people were about evenly split on the need to change the tax system, 55 percent said there should be a corporate income tax. A clear majority — 82 percent — said tax increases should be temporary until the economy recovers.

In an overview of the poll results, Bolger noted that support for raising taxes to close the state’s budget deficit was at an all-time high.

However, slightly more than half of the people polled thought the proposed spending levels — which make substantial cuts — were acceptable, and 56 percent thought spending cuts could be absorbed. Most Nevadans felt that tax increases on businesses would result in job losses, even though they supported the hikes.

The inconsistency is telling. Most people aren’t dogmatic on taxes, unlike the anti-tax, anti-government types. Nevadans understand that taxes pay for necessary services, particularly a strong education system.

Bolger noted that when education was mentioned, fewer people supported cutting the budget to close the deficit. People are willing to raise taxes for education. Asked how the Nevada System of Higher Education’s budget deficit should be dealt with, 36 percent said taxes should be increased, compared with 21 percent who said the budget should be cut. And nearly three-quarters of those polled said teachers’ salaries shouldn’t be cut.

Unfortunately, conservatives have framed the budget debate in Nevada as one between budget cuts or tax increases, and that’s simply not the case. There certainly can and should be a mix of cuts and tax increases. As we have noted before, the current tax system is broken and inequitable, and many businesses get away paying virtually no taxes. That has to change.

The Legislature has been over this ground before. There have been several studies, and the issues have been well vetted. There are ways to broaden the tax base and ease the tax burden so it isn’t simply on a handful of groups or industries.

For years, Nevada has been locked in fruitless debates over the budget because no one wanted to be politically tarred by raising taxes. As a result, there hasn’t been enough money to provide adequate schools and services. We would hope that leaders in Carson City would find new courage and not let the debate be controlled any longer by the anti-tax crowd. The bottom line is simple: Nevadans want services and are willing to raise taxes to pay for them.