The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1932-09-29
Income Tax Bunk

~ NEMIES of the proposed income tax amendment
II to the state constitution apparently will go to
- any extreme to defeat the measure And saddest
fact of the fight is that certain journals which like
to pose in the lmelght the farmers most sincere
friends leading the fight.
These enemies argue something like thls-'We
that the farmer is overaxed and that something
should be done about it, probably income tax is the
best method of relieving the burden real estate but
HORRORS must not enact the proposed amend
ment because it does provide that the tax shall
be replacement tax, consequently the governor who
is after November and the legislators, who
ever are elected, certain to squander the money
raised by the tax The farmer will just have to get
along two more years until amendment which suits
fancy be passed"
Behind this SANDER is the imprinted thought eff
stall the farmers off another two years, maybe
they will forget their tax burden. Or the amend
be defeated in the house the plea that it
rejected by the voters At least hackers
will escape paying state income tax for two more
years"
And so they make much ado about one manufact-
uring plant moving from Wisconsin because the in
tax made the operations there unproftable"-
avoiding mention of the fact that income tax was
collected from this plant unless it made profits and
purposely forgetting the hosts of farmers who have
lost their farms partly because of tax burdens-whch
certainly overshadow the loss of manufacturing
plant
But the most absurd argument from the
Minneapolis Journal which contends that the defeat
of LaFollette in Wisconsin is revolt against the in
tax. We suppose the upset in Maine, then,
also revolt against income tax and if Governor
Floyd B. Olson and even President Herbert Hoover
defeated this fall, that too, will be attributable
not to revolt against conditions but against income
taxes Strangely enough the Wisconsin income tax be-
a law in 1911 Twenty years later voters ere
volt against it, they would have us believe.
So many statistics and opinions have been brought
out of Wisconsin and mixed to suit side the
other of this question that they probably will neither
help hurt the issue However, it is enghtening to
rural voters that the rural press is almost 100 per
cent in favor of the amendment Here is enlght-
enng discussion of the Wisconsin situation taken from
the Mankato Free Press:
"Wisconsin collected in 1929 in Income Tax for
state purposes $9,S32,792 General taxes for state
purposes amounted to $5,23 total of SIS &c.,
SIS
1.-THE state levy on general property in Minnesota
for the five 1910 to 1914 the much-outed pre-
war" period) averaged $5330037. For the five years
1925 to 1929 (our prosperity years) it averaged
$12,697,575. The increase over $7,300,000
"The Wisconsin state levy general property
for the 1910-1914 period averaged $4900977 just
little under Mnnesotas. The levy for the 1925-1929
period averaged So 301 ,59S, a reduction from the
earlier period of $26OOOOO In years out of the
state purposes.
$50 while Mnnesotas state levy going up
more than seven million dollars (and gross earnings
and iron taxes went up, too) Wisconsins
down than two and half million! Total collec-
tions from the Wisconsin income take during the 1926
1929 period averaged $17O11 200. The 40 per cent
which went to the state averaged $6,804,481. Add
this to her grand tax levy, and find that sis
ter state collected in direct taxes and income taxes
some three and half million dollars less year for
state purposes than did in direct taxes alone. The
comparison complicated by the fact that Wisconsin
has not system of state aid to school, has not the
gross earnings and iron ore taxes that we have and
finances her highways out of the county rather than
state funds But the comparison is all in her favor,
so far as state expenditures 60"
Apparently the political claims of political par
ties about reliable as their promises. Every
state and every county has been claimed by two or
three parties this year, usually by Overwhelming
majority"