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Published: 2/25/2012 11:25 PM | Last update: 2/26/2012 4:47 PM The world has always been plagued with liars. The bigger the whopper, the more people are apt to believe it. The biggest lie of election year 2010: The Affordable Care Act is a "government takeover" of private healthcare. (Remember Palin's lie about "death panels?") The biggest lie of election year 2012: The Affordable Care Act is a "declaration of war" against religious freedom.

House substitute for SB 177, moved out of the House Taxation Committee and is now up for debate on the House floor. This bill will phase out income tax and income tax deductions/credits plus take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the state highway plan to make ends meet. This will put counties and cities into the position of raising property taxes to fill the loss in state revenue for education and all the programs that help our children and the disadvantaged in our state.

----------advertisement----------- "This proposal has the potential for thousands of Kansas children to slip into poverty should this tax package become law" Shannon Cotsoradis, President and CEO of the nonprofit Kansas Action for Children.

Kansans should support a tax policy that contains a balance of income, property, and sales taxes. This maintains fairness among income groups and provides stability for education, infrastructure, social services, and public safety, which are the things that matter most to the people and businesses of Kansas.

The governor stated his plan would create business expansion and economic prosperity but the truth is quite different according to an article published in Lawrence Journal-World and written by Carl Davis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, who looked at the research of Arthur Laffer, who is the supporting research for a no-tax concept.

Laffer is tied to California's Proposition 13, which devastated that state. One of Laffer's oversights was no attention to the tremendous natural resources some no-tax states have at their disposal. Two are Alaska and Wyoming which are the two states most dependent on mining/oil and their growth cannot be tied to no-income tax. The nine no-tax states are lagging behind the nine states with the highest income tax rates in economic growth. Most no-tax states are actually doing worse than the national average. Concerning unemployment rate, no-tax states and high tax rate states are basically even. No-tax states aren't experiencing economic growth and lawmakers are cautioned to not expect economies to improve if they join the no-tax or low-tax states.

The economic factors that matter most to families are income levels and finding employment. The states with the highest income tax rates are, in most cases, doing better than the no-tax states. If the economy is really lawmakers' concerns, they can put the income tax issues at rest. The research does not support it.

SHELLEY DUNHAM

LOUISE SMITH

Hesston

The rest is here:
No-tax not better