White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Sweet Jumping Jehoshaphat! Why did I not see this coming:

The state wants to collect your taxes:

Not just your state taxes, which makes perfect sense, but also some of your local taxes, such as the earned income tax now collected by your elected tax man, or the school district, or some firm like Berkheimer Associates.

The state wants to do that now and thinks it can do it better than the local guys.

The local guys disagree.

Darn tootin' the local guys disagree. We are seeing this as just a big government scheme. The state says you can get a slice of the slot machine proceeds for schools if you start charging a local tax, then they move in to take it over. Next step, increasing said tax a few years down the line. Not that they would fess up to this, but here is their (lame) reasoning:

At a hearing yesterday to discuss proposed reforms to Pennsylvania's earned income tax collection system, officials with the departments of Revenue and Community and Economic Development argued that municipalities are missing out on $100 million in revenue, "lost" to a structure that is inefficient and fragmented.

A report issued by the Governor's Center for Local Government Services estimates that, statewide, it costs $51 million in overhead to collect the local income taxes, which themselves total $1.7 billion. It says the state Revenue Department could do the same job for about $17 million, not including $18 million in startup and transition costs.

"Significant consolidation is appropriate," said Ken Klothen, a deputy secretary with the Rendell administration. The local earned income tax collection duties should be performed by the state or, failing that, the counties.

Quite frankly, I don't agree with the balkanized way things are done here in Pennsylvania, it opens up too many avenues for fraud and mismanagement. However, with this many people keeping an eye on things, it also prevents the 'STATE' from performing its usual skullduggery. In the end, it would be more rational to eliminate this local tax nonsense and move to a single state-wide sales tax that would be allocated equally among the state's public schools. If you don't like the public school in your area, then there are a multitude of parochial, charter or home schooling options as well. In the end, there are too many taxes being collected at the behest of our various levels of state/county/township organs:

Local earned income taxes aren't unique to Pennsylvania, but they are nearly so. Only 11 other states allow local agents -- that is, school districts and municipalities -- to levy income taxes. In Pennsylvania, there are 2,878 local income taxes, more than in the rest of the states combined. And the taxes themselves come in varied shapes and sizes -- the lowest rate is 0.28 percent, while the highest, Scranton's, is 2.4 percent.