Flat tax issue puts LDS legislators in a bind

Utah legislators are often reluctant to talk candidly about how they are being lobbied and/or entertained by lobbyists.

And one can understand that it is personally, and perhaps professionally, embarrassing to have news stories written about how you accept Jazz tickets or $200 dinners at the New Yorker from people paid to influence you.

But just start calling around to ask lawmakers how they are being lobbied by the LDS Church and you reach a whole new level of nervousness.

In Utah, members of the LDS Church do not criticize the church — even in areas that are usually very open to discussions, like politics or public policy.

It is just kind of a given.

Yes, there are those who are not church members, or were church members but left the church, who regularly comment on non-ecclesiastical church policies.

But if you are a church member and a public official, it's a different playing field.

At the state Republican Party Convention last weekend, Jeremy Friedbaum, a candidate for party office, hit the nerve. He said that in Utah, LDS people involved in public affairs too often are expected to treat politics like they treat their religion.

It is not OK to question the prophet of their church — and understandably so — but it is OK, or should be OK, to question the leader of their party or the incumbent U.S. senator, legislator or city councilman.

In the big picture, it is the inability to separate an authoritarian part of one's life — religion — with another authoritarian structure — government and politics.

Another facet of that discussion is now taking place in state government — the debate over whether Utah should adopt a flat rate personal income tax that has no deductions for charitable giving, mortgage interest payments or anything else.

The LDS Church this spring issued a statement — really a re-statement of a position church leaders took more than a decade ago — that the charitable deduction should be kept as part of the state tax code.

In statements made 15 years ago (but not restated recently), church leaders said they aren't concerned about LDS Church members still donating 10 percent of their income to the church — that money will still come with or without a state tax deduction.

Rather, they are concerned about giving to other charities, like the arts, food banks, foundations and so on.

A flat rate income tax bill actually passed the Utah House years ago. The church then took the stand that the charitable deduction should remain, and the bill failed.

That failure likely contained other elements as well — was the bill well thought-out, how would it impact poorer Utahns, etc. But certainly the church's stand helped its death.