But he said Ventura was not ready to drop the proposal to impose a tax on services. The effect of the Ventura tax plan on mining also came as a surprise to Smith. Progressivity and regressivity are measures of the extent to which people of differing income levels pay the same or different percentages of their income in taxes. Smith said of the tax changes. The Revenue Department's latest analysis of the tax plan contradicts some critics, who had charged that Ventura's effort to increase Minnesota's reliance on the sales tax and decrease the role of the property tax would make poor people pay a proportionately greater share of state and local taxes.
Most states have regressive systems.
In Minnesota, where a very progressive state income tax is combined with regressive property and sales taxes, people across all income levels pay about the same percentage of their income in taxes. Overall, Minnesota's system is slightly regressive, but it is one of the least regressive combinations of taxes in the country. The most regressive tax urged by Ventura, according to the analysis, was his proposal to tax funerals. That's because people of all income levels pay approximately the same for their funerals. The most progressive tax proposed by the governor would be a new tax on construction services.