State Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville, wants to give hard working, low income Kentucky families a tax cut. He's proposed a bill that would create a tax credit equal to 7.5 percent of the average federal earned income tax credit that over 350,000 Kentucky families qualify for. The tax cut would amount to a total of $45 million dollars. Sounds great doesn't it? Not so fast. He's utilizing a long-standing liberal ploy called the "revenue neutral" solution to achieve these ends, and we should not fall for it.
Even the term "revenue neutral" sounds innocuous until you dig into its meaning.
It means that some small group of hidden citizens will be bearing the burden to make a "feel good" tax cut plausible for the common good.
A recent article in the Herald-Leader was quick to point out the feel good math. The tax credit that Rep. Wayne proposes would help 350,000 low-income families. But it will be paid for by an expansion of the estate tax by taxing estates worth over $3.5 million dollars with family farms exempted. The article points out that this expansion will only affect about 350 Kentucky families per year. Erie how they were able to figure out that this plan could be paid for by imposing a tax increase on exactly one-one thousandth of the number of people that the proposed tax cut would ultimately benefit. The government can simply take $45 million away from only 350, very wealthy people when they die and use it to give a tax break to 350,000 very poor people. Who wouldn't be for that?
