While as true flat rate income tax — one with no deductions for charities, home mortgage interest, dependent children and so on — may be dead in the tax reform debate, other legislative leaders are talking about keeping the current income tax system with all of its deductions and either expand the current brackets — thereby giving greater tax breaks to low- and middle-income Utahns — or just lower the current tax rates slightly, giving a tax break to everyone.

The governor has suggested that the state must lower the top tax rate from the current 7 percent to between 4 percent and 5 percent to make Utah competitive with surrounding states, especially Nevada and Wyoming which do not have a state income tax.

"That would be a step toward competitiveness," Huntsman said recently, that would help Utah businesses as well as attract new companies to the state. "It helps everybody," he's said, calling lowering the rate more important than eliminating corporate income tax.

Although the governor had pitched the phase-out of the corporate income tax as crucial for economic development, now he is saying he's "not going to hold everything else hostage in the name of corporate taxes."

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