May 22, 2017 4 min read

Local editorials from 50 years ago are being reprinted every Monday and Tuesday in this column. This editorial appeared in the Evening Standard, a predecessor of the Herald-Standard, on May 14, 1967.

If Gov. Shafer feels he may face a revolt among his Republican-controlled Senate and House over passage of a flat 1 percent income tax on earnings, he should find out what the taxpayer thinks of such an idea. They’ll be ready to revolt also.

The people are angry. They feel they will have been “taken,” as they say in the parlance of the gambler. Gov. Shafer emphatically declared, in his campaign for passage of the state constitutional amendments, that he was opposed to a graduated income tax and that passage of such a tax by a constitutional convention would be forbidden.

To the person who pays, a flat income tax of 1 percent or a 1 percent tax on the adjusted net income of taxpayers as reported to the federal government is almost the same as a graduated income tax.

The governor says one income tax or the other — a flat income tax on earnings or the adjusted income tax on adjusted income — will be needed to help meet the increased state budget. Present indications are that $304 million in extra revenue to balance the $1,861,000,000 budget must be raised. Also the legislature may boost it some more for some of their own pet projects.

Other sources of more income would be a 1 cent increase in the cigarette tax, from 8 cents to 9 cents a package; also a 2 percent boost in the corporate net income tax, from 6 to 8 percent. Taxpayers would get a 52 percent credit from the federal government on their tax payment to the state.

Whatever his fiscal advisors have told him about an income tax across the state, the leakage of such a tax has stirred up a hornet’s nest.

If the governor makes an appearance nowadays he has to assure some questioner that so far “no decision has been made about new taxes.”

Gov. Shafer postponed his message to the legislature until June 1. The House and Senate will convene for one day to hear the governor’s revenue recommendations.

Up to this point the various departments, with the exception of the Insurance Department, have shown little tendency to cut the fat out of the budget. The governor told a joint session of the Assembly on April 11 that it could be made more lean.

Of the additional funds asked in the budget, $52 million will be required for expenditures approved at previous sessions of the General Assembly. These are those mandated increases that are so annoying to each new administration.

Most of the mandated increases were placed there by powerful lobbies in Harrisburg. Many of them are non-essential and should be dropped when possible. In other words it’s not the new legislature’s fault for all of the needed tax boosts. The mandated expenditures of previous assemblies have tied a rope around the present legislators’ necks.

Some place Gov. Shafer will have to find ways to burn off the fat from the budget. One method would be to have brought his tax message to the General Assembly when it was in session — not for a one-day session when mileage costs for the legislators and other expenses have to be paid.

The governor is certain of a real rock-em, sock-em battle if he attempts to impose an income tax on Pennsylvania’s taxpayers.

Already the taxpayer is burdened with high federal income taxes, in many places there is a local wage tax and now this possibility of a 1 percent income tax for state revenue.

We’re almost at the point of no return. The breadwinner soon will be working for the government if these taxes keep chopping away the take home pay.

Also that innocent looking 1 percent tax might be a wedge for still higher income taxes in the future.