How much will tax cuts benefit Utahns?

Utah legislators finally got around to giving residents a personal income tax cut for this year — combined in a dual-tax approach.

In a five-hour special session Tuesday, they also gave counties the ability to place on a general election ballot the question of whether residents in each county may approve a quarter-cent sales tax for roads and rail transit.

So, in a two-steps-forward, one-step-back dance with sales taxes, the state's food tax will drop by 2 percentage points in January, and starting with Salt Lake County in the Nov. 7 election, citizens may increase their sales taxes for roads and rails.

In Salt Lake County, the food tax cut with the transportation sales tax hike is about a wash — citizens are not harmed greatly one way or the other.

But there is little doubt that the new 5.35 percent flat-rate income tax, coming in 2007, will greatly benefit wealthier Utahns.

Averages mean little here; there could be a family that gets an additional tax break of $1 or $5 on the low end with the flat tax, while there could be rich families that get a $2,000 or $3,000 tax cut via the new alternative.

But budget officials say the average tax cut under the flat-rate system will be around $700.

For the 95 percent of Utah income-tax payers who will stay under the old tax system — because they get a larger tax cut by staying put — state officials guess that the tax cuts will be between $40 and $50 for married filers, half that for single taxpayers.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. says Utah has to offer a significantly lower personal income-tax rate to attract and expand businesses here — the main argument being that top executives will shop their firms in states where they personally don't have big tax burdens.

Nevada and Wyoming have no state income taxes. Other western states have been lowering their income tax rates, Huntsman and his tax reform backers point out.

Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, a certified public accountant who has been on the leading edge of tax cuts and tax reform, says that several other states are interested in Utah's dual-track tax system — which was adopted Tuesday.

All told, Utah officials say, the new dual system is the right way to go.

The politics of the income-tax cut are interesting.

While legislative Democrats favored the transportation sales-tax option for voters, most of them opposed the income-tax cut.

Always looking to push the bipartisan button, GOP leaders were able to say that the income-tax reform/tax cut had Democratic support.