Gene Pagani – 3/26/06

This page was last updated on March 26, 2006.

Get rid of school taxes; Gene Pagani; Beaver County Times; March 26, 2006.

Please don’t interpret the following as support for school taxes and spending as they currently exist. My intent is simply to show the flaws in Mr. Pagani’s letter.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“It is time for the state legislators to wake up and do something about local school property taxes.

“It is an unfair tax because only people with children in school benefit from it. Elderly people on a fixed income have to leave their homes due to high cost of school taxes. County and municipal property taxes are fair because people receive services for those taxes.”

[RWC] Note the first sentence in this paragraph for future reference. Mr. Pagani also doesn’t provide any data to support the assertion in the second sentence. I know this is a popular belief, but I’ve never seen anyone provide supporting data.

“School taxes need to be replaced with sales tax levied on everything except food and state income tax. This way, people who are working and spending money are paying for the schools. By putting a sales tax on clothing, when a student buys designer clothing and shoes, he/she will be helping to pay for his/her own education.”

[RWC] In the context of the previous paragraph, does Mr. Pagani believe “elderly people” don’t pay sales taxes? Further, don’t a lot of people – elderly or not – without kids still end up “paying for the schools?”

“People can make choices on where and what they want to spend on clothing. For example, they can buy they’re [sic] clothing either at Kmart or Macy’s.”

[RWC] This is the idiotic position that the sales tax is a “voluntary” tax. In other words, these people claim you can reduce your school taxes by spending less. Sadly, I heard this same argument from State Rep. Sam Rohrer (R-128). In his example, Mr. Rohrer claimed a family could “choose” to pay less in school taxes by choosing to buy “a can of pizza mix” instead of a prepared pizza at a pizza shop!

“The school districts needs [sic] to be more accountable for their spending. The state then needs to figure out the cost for educating a student and give each school district appropriate funds according to the number of students.”

[RWC] Mr. Pagani has it exactly backwards. Sadly, people become more profligate when they convince themselves they are spending someone else’s money. If you want to make school districts “more accountable for their spending,” the guys responsible for the taxes need to look those people paying the taxes directly in the eye on a daily basis.

Mr. Pagani’s proposal will only result in greater runaway spending, if that’s possible.

“The school districts will have to operate with that amount of money. If it is not enough, then they have to request additional funding or cut their expenses.”

[RWC] Earth to Mr. Pagani. That’s the current process with regard to state tax dollars to schools. That process works real well – not.

“Schoolteachers’ and administrators’ salaries should be the same statewide.”

[RWC] Why? If local taxpayers want to be taxed and spend more, why not let them?

“Doing away with the local school taxes would create a boom for the state. It would also cause an increase in construction of office complexes, factories and in many other areas. The school tax is a big burden on all of the industries.”

[RWC] Where does Mr. Pagani get this idea? After all, all Mr. Pagani does is shift taxes; he doesn’t propose a tax cut. Further, the overall taxes paid by Pennsylvania businesses and individual will actually increase as we further disconnect responsibility for spending tax dollars from raising tax dollars.

If Mr. Pagani is so concerned about businesses, why doesn’t he just propose that businesses not have to pay taxes? After all, we individuals end up paying the so-called “business” taxes anyway through higher prices, lower wages, et cetera.

“There are too many advantages to list from abolishing school taxes. So the state legislators better do something quick before we lose out on more businesses coming to Pennsylvania.”

[RWC] Mr. Pagani didn’t propose “abolishing school taxes.” He simply proposed shifting the local school property tax into a state school sales tax.