The Coming Tax Crisis

Our leaders need to spend more time thinking about local tax and less about frivolities like an international tax, proposed this morning by Jacques Chirac at Davos, a gathering of the world's leaders that included Bill Clinton.

Local taxes pay for the education for our children, for the quality of our roads, and to train and adequately equip the police that protect us. While times were great, I'll bet the city you lived in built all kinds of beautiful new buildings. Now that times are poor they can't even afford to reimburse city workers like Denver Deputy Sheriff George Gatchis for the injuries he suffered off-duty when he was trying to save a child from a fire.

Local taxes are primarily derived from sales taxes. What is our strategy for collecting local sales tax in twenty years, when more online commerce is done with places like China and there is software that eliminates the language barriers that currently exist? Governments would like to pretend there are no problems: how else can you explain why so many people insist there are no future problems with Social Security at the same time that company pension plans are in such deep trouble?

As a small business person and a Republican, I'm against new taxes. However, we will reap a whirlwind if we fail to manage the fair collection of existing taxes.