Fixing Nevada’s Fiscal Mess Is Going To Be A Challenge
By: Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President
I’ve just finished with my third read of Geoffrey Lawrence’s policy paper , “One Sound State – Once Again”. The highlights of his proposal are easy concepts to understand, but may be a problem to enthusiastically embrace as a complete package.
Lawrence, a policy analyst with the Nevada Policy Research Institute, writes that “comprehensive fiscal reforms for Nevada should include:
To be completely candid the only real difficulty that I’m having with the proposal is the part involving broadening the sales tax base and what will likely happen to agricultural sales tax exemptions that I’ve spent 21 years of my career working to accomplish. Most notably is the sales tax exemption granted only a couple of election cycles ago that provides a sales tax exemption for farm machinery.
Throughout the United States farm machinery and equipment is provided such an exemption and giving up the hard-earned win of obtaining the exemption here in Nevada would place our state’s farmers and ranchers back into having to compete with other producers who don’t have to add that extra cost onto the necessary equipment that they need to purchase to be in business. In the final analysis, that is probably why implementing the sound and common-sense ideas Lawrence is offering is going to be so difficult.
If you compare the difficulty of an interest group that I probably come as close to representing as any other – one which strongly believes in limited government and small tax assessments – with the problems of those who consider government as the ultimate provider of all we can hope to receive…figuring out how to acquire the necessary political support for implementation is going to be a heavy lift.
Great ideas (and even those which are mostly great ideas) of scaling back governmental programs or preferential treatment are very much like diets which are easy to tell others to practice, but a little more difficult when it is our own to carry out. That’s why my closet has more hangers for larger pant sizes.
Even though the process of having a meaningful public exchange of these ideas is going to be challenging – an alternative approach of thinking we can grow government even more beyond the means of taxpayers to support is hardly a better one. A broader, smaller sales tax rate, which is someone locked in solidly with extensive protections from runaway government spending binges – as Nevada legislators have been doing to us – will be a better system than what we currently have.
To the degree that enough of a legislative majority can be marshaled to pull it off will remain to be seen.
I’ve just finished with my third read of Geoffrey Lawrence’s policy paper , “One Sound State – Once Again”. The highlights of his proposal are easy concepts to understand, but may be a problem to enthusiastically embrace as a complete package.
Lawrence, a policy analyst with the Nevada Policy Research Institute, writes that “comprehensive fiscal reforms for Nevada should include:
- Eliminating the modified business tax;
- Eliminating the insurance premium tax;
- Broadening the sales tax base and reducing the statewide sales tax to 3.5 percent;
- Implementing priority-based budgeting; and
- Implementing spending controls that limit state spending growth to the rate of inflation plus population increase.
To be completely candid the only real difficulty that I’m having with the proposal is the part involving broadening the sales tax base and what will likely happen to agricultural sales tax exemptions that I’ve spent 21 years of my career working to accomplish. Most notably is the sales tax exemption granted only a couple of election cycles ago that provides a sales tax exemption for farm machinery.
Throughout the United States farm machinery and equipment is provided such an exemption and giving up the hard-earned win of obtaining the exemption here in Nevada would place our state’s farmers and ranchers back into having to compete with other producers who don’t have to add that extra cost onto the necessary equipment that they need to purchase to be in business. In the final analysis, that is probably why implementing the sound and common-sense ideas Lawrence is offering is going to be so difficult.
If you compare the difficulty of an interest group that I probably come as close to representing as any other – one which strongly believes in limited government and small tax assessments – with the problems of those who consider government as the ultimate provider of all we can hope to receive…figuring out how to acquire the necessary political support for implementation is going to be a heavy lift.
Great ideas (and even those which are mostly great ideas) of scaling back governmental programs or preferential treatment are very much like diets which are easy to tell others to practice, but a little more difficult when it is our own to carry out. That’s why my closet has more hangers for larger pant sizes.
Even though the process of having a meaningful public exchange of these ideas is going to be challenging – an alternative approach of thinking we can grow government even more beyond the means of taxpayers to support is hardly a better one. A broader, smaller sales tax rate, which is someone locked in solidly with extensive protections from runaway government spending binges – as Nevada legislators have been doing to us – will be a better system than what we currently have.
To the degree that enough of a legislative majority can be marshaled to pull it off will remain to be seen.
Posted by Doug Busselman at 6/5/2010 7:39 AM 
Categories: Nevada
Tags: Interim Finance Committee Nevada Budget State Spending Taxes Nevada Policy Research Institute
Categories: Nevada
Tags: Interim Finance Committee Nevada Budget State Spending Taxes Nevada Policy Research Institute
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