Don’t trust Bevin tax plan

I read in this newspaper about the Pegasus Institute’s Jordan Harris praising Gov. Matt Bevin’s plan for Kentucky tax reform while urging you to “pay no attention to what happened in Kansas.” That’s got to be the most irresponsible thing anyone has ever said — and we’ve got Trump for president.

For the love of God, pay attention to Kansas. In 2012, Kansas elected Sam Brownback governor. He quickly got to work on his “tax experiment,” a “shot of adrenaline in the heart of the Kansas economy.”

Brownback got rid of taxes on owner-operated businesses and drastically slashed funds to public services. The result? Kansas got fewer dollars in revenue each year. In 2014, Kansas paid $700 million less in state taxes than the previous year. Roads were not fixed, hospitals were underfunded and Kansas struggled to find the funds to open schools in 2017. Bevin’s tax plan will lower the income tax rate to 4.6 percent and will gain us a 6 percent tax hike on groceries, which are currently untaxed. After Bevin’s budget cuts, your groceries and prescriptions will be more expensive. But if you happen to make over 400,000 a year, you’ll be golden, because Bevin, like President DonaldTrump, takes care of his rich friends.

This story was originally published November 17, 2017 at 7:19 PM with the headline "Don’t trust Bevin tax plan."