"This could be remedied by establishing an Earned Income Credit (in state income taxes) based on 40 percent of the federal credit. For more than a decade Utah Issues has called for the enactment of a significant earned income credit for Utah's working families. We do so again," Macdonald said.

Meanwhile, in a related matter, Tax Commission bosses admit that in 2005 — just before Macdonald retired — they put off publishing his biennial of tax burdens in the state.

For decades, the commission had issued a tax burden report every other year. It routinely showed that Utah households carried one of the highest tax burdens among the Western states while Utah businesses' tax burdens were falling.

The report was frowned upon by a number of conservative legislators, who didn't like the Tax Commission lending its considerable influence to a report that some considered anti-business.

But Tax Commissioner Marc Johnson says the commission has gotten no "pressure either way" to publish or not publish the tax burden report.

Raw data presented by Macdonald in 2005 wasn't in a form that could be published that year, said Johnson. And the commission just overlooked the tax burden study for 2007 following key changes in the agency's employees and commissioners, he added.

The commissioners are now reviewing which tax studies will be published in the future, Johnson said. The tax burden study may come back, but Johnson said that decision has not yet been made.

One of the general obligations of the Tax Commission, as written in the commission's basic statute, is to "transmit to the governor and to each member of the Legislature recommendations as to legislation which will correct or eliminate defects in the operation of tax laws and will equalize the burden of taxation within the state."

However, some lawmakers didn't like the publicity that came with the tax burden report, since it showed that middle-income Utah families were carrying a higher tax burden than their counterparts in surrounding Western states.

Macdonald says that a month before he retired, tax commissioners killed his 2005 tax burden report, which he says was ready to move forward.

The demise of the tax burden report, for whatever reason, comes alongside the decision by the four tax commissioners — appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate — in 2005 to stop issuing (as part of the commission's monthly TC23 state revenue report) estimates of how large of a tax surplus the state is running — also a politically sensitive topic.

Last month, at the insistence of leading GOP legislators, a combined group of state economists issued the first of what will become quarterly reports on state tax surpluses.

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