TN TAX BATTLE: More battles inevitable, but is income tax?

The Commercial Appeal ^ | 7/7/02 | Richard Locker

[tdadams]

[Tennessee] taxes 12.3 percent of the income of the poorest 20 percent of its people, according to the report, while the top 1 percent in income pay the equivalent of 3.6 percent of their income in taxes.

Maybe I'm deficient in math, but if the current maximum sales tax rate is 8.75%, how is anyone paying 12.3%? No one is paying more than 8.75%.

Also, I find it interesting how many papers are hewing and crying that TN's sales tax rate is now as high as 9.75%. They never mention that some states have both an income tax and a sales tax that comprise a combined tax rate of as much as 15% or more in some states.

I guess honesty in reporting is too much to ask these days.

[Ancient_Pistoll]

>>How does a 1% increase in the sales tax become a 17% increase? This is puzzling.<<

They increased the tax from 6% on the dollar to 7% on the dollar. That equals to a 1% increase on the dollar. The way the pro-income taxers are spinning it is by saying they increased the tax rate of .06 17% to .07.

Instead of them calculating it by the dollar amount, what they're doing is figuring from the current tax rate of 6% to the 7% that will take effect on the 15th. Get your calculator and divide 1 by 6 and it will come up .166 which they're rounding up to .17, or add 17% to .06 and it will come up to .070 which is what the new rate will be. Mathematically they're correct, but the only reason they're saying a 17% increase in the tax rate instead of a 1% increase in the amount in relation to the dollar is that it sounds sinister.

[GailA]

Under boss hogg's plan the tax increase would have been 25% for the total of the various tax increases. The only thing I could figure out that the 17% was the total of the cooper tax increas. Because as deficient as I sometimes am in math, 1% of $1 is still only a penny even I can't mess that simple math up.