Tulsa World
By WAYNE GREENE World Senior Writer
Published: 1/8/20122:36 AM
Last Modified: 1/8/20127:51 AM
Key proposals from a state tax-reform task force are drawing heat - from members of the task force.
One proposal - to reduce the state's top personal income tax rate by 0.5 percent, and to pay for it by eliminating tax exemptions and credits used by thousands of low-income Oklahomans - amounts to taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich, said task force member Don Millican.
Another proposal - to eliminate the personal income tax but to examine the state sales-tax base as a possible means of making up the lost state revenue - would lead to taxation of a broad range of services for the first time, an economically foolish plan, said task force member Richard Dowell.
Millican and Dowell were two of the six task force members who declined to sign the report, which was released last week and is likely to be the blueprint for tax-reform plans before the Legislature this year. Fourteen members signed the report.
Sen. Mike Mazzei, R-Tulsa, co-chairman of the task force, said the group's majority felt the plan would benefit a broad majority of taxpayers - including the poor and middle-class - and increase state tax revenue $70 million for education, roads and bridges... FULL ARTICLE
Posted on
Sun, January 8, 2012
by John Cox