Which states have low license tab fees (i.e. $30 or in that range...) AND no state income tax?

I asked this question in a response statement, but didn't receive a reply and would love to know the answer.

Thank you!

-- Washington Citizen (washingtonian77@hotmail.com), August 05, 1999

Answers

Given that only seven states (Washington included), don't have income taxes, you aren't going to find very many. But that's not the point. If the state can get by on 98% of what it is currently taking in, it doesn't need the MVET (or an income tax apparently). The issue then becomes, should the 2% be taken from somewhere else, or from the MVET. The recurrent theme of the politicians is that it is unconscionable for I-695 to remove this money without coming up with funding to replace it. I personally just don't believe that the world will come to an end if they have to operate on 98% of current revenue projections.

Do you truly believe there is not 2% of waste or low priority government spending in this state?

-- Gary Henriksen (henrik@harbornet.com), August 05, 1999.

Gary:

Good point. The government mindset, and that of the defenders of bigger government, astound me. This mindset maintains that government must never be made to do with less, must never think differently, and must never re-engineer itself to conform to new circumstances. Thus, these defenders find even the slightest effort at tax reduction unacceptable. To these people, government is to be completely immune to anything except extracting more money and growing larger. They couldn't care less about the private sector.

I remember in 1980 when Reagan proposed a 30 percent income tax decrease over three years. All of a sudden you heard from those who opposed any cut at all that Reagan's proposal was a "revenue expenditure," as if government had first call on the wealth produced by Americans. This same mindset exists in Washington. In the real world of work-a-day people, a "revenue expenditure" is a "tax reduction," and I'm all for it.

-- A.C. Johnson (ajohnson@thefuture.net), August 10, 1999.

The State of Florida, where I lived for 21 years before moving to Washington last year, has no state income tax and a MVET of around $30 (plus you have to pay for the emissions check if you live in certain counties).

-- Paul Broman (pbroman@uswest.net), August 16, 1999.

Last year, most states cut their taxes. The average cut was 5.5% But Washington did not. We rank as one of the highest taxed states in the USA. The latest budget is 20.33% higher than the last biennial budget, while population is growing at a rate of 1.3% per year. That means WA government is growing ten times faster than the population!

-- Art Rathjen (liberty@coastaccess.com), August 17, 1999.