Sales Tax Increase For Kansas Starting June 2010

Like many states, Kansas is facing large budgetary shortfalls. To overcome them, the government has issued a sales tax increase starting in June 2010 that will last a year.

The current fiscal situation is a rather odd one across the country. The states, cities and counties are all suffering badly because they are running big deficits. The reason for these deficits? So many people have lost their homes and jobs that property, income and sales tax receipts are way down. It is an ugly situation.

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Kansas has come up with a solution that is fairly typical when it comes to politicians and politics. The governor has led a charge to make up the deficit by raising taxes higher despite the fact most taxpayers in the state are struggling as we slowly come out of the Great Recession. Don't you just love politicians?

The sales tax increase is not a small one. Governor Mark Parkinson has inflated the sales tax rate from 5.3 percent to 6.3 percent, a full one percent. Proponents of the increase have couched it as a temporary increase that will only last a year until the economy improves. This argument is a bold faced misrepresentation if one just looks at the number. Once the year does ends, the sales tax rate does not drop back to 5.3 percent. Instead, it only drops to 5.7 with the state using the rest for some vague needs. In the real world, they call this a bait and switch!

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Perhaps the most galling thing with this tax increase is the fact the Governor and his minions are living in a fantasy world. There isn't a single economist that predicts things will be back to normal in a year. In fact, a good number of the credible ones are suggesting we will go the other way with the economy falling into a double dip recession as the European Union falls apart given the huge economic problems of Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and the United Kingdom.

One has to wonder what the politicians in Kansas will do then. Perhaps another "temporary" sales tax increase? What a joke.

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