Comments about ‘Taxes eyed as way to fill $850M gap in budget’

Define human services as mentioned in the article. Utah is already notorious among educators for slashing education spending at the first hint of shortfall. What human services are provided with tax dollars? Maybe we should spend less on handouts and not have to keep teaching salaries shamefully low.

Tax all children after two, that should keep Utah in the green for decades.

I am envious of Utah, your state has a shortfall of 850 million and down here in Arizona the budget shortfall is now at 2 billion plus and growing. The state of Arizona is now going to have to borrow from the federal goverment an estimated 650 million dollars to continue paying out unemployment benefits for 2010. The solution is probably going to be a tax increase later next year, and with so many people out of work and in danger of losing their homes and jobs if the "great recession" keeps expanding things are not looking good at all. I am just amazed that Washington continues to throw fuel on the fire by spending more and more billions of dollars, and now the news is that there is a move towards raising the national debt to 13 trillion. I am afraid of what lies ahead of this nation if we don't slam the brakes on the runaway debt train. I wonder what will happen when the interest in the debt comes due?

What's so hard for legislators to understand? They cannot sustain the expensive and elaborate government they have created. Any and all programs not affiliated with government operations are subject to closure. This includes services in welfare, education, and illegal alien benefits. This includes subsidized housing, child care, utility payments, health care, and any other tax funded personal services.

We do not have a socialistic government and any socialist programs were out of the kindness of excesses government had in funding. All subject to conditional terms and availability of funds which now there are none. So none of these programs should remain in service as long as the economy remains stagnent and repressive.

There is no valid reason to even consider tax increases while criminally avoiding the cuts they must make in many areas of government handouts. The first criteria of any government handout must be citizenship, not hardship. Just by enforcing a citizenship requirement would more than offset any budget shortfalls by millions if not billions of dollars.

And our legislators wonder why citizens are demanding ethical reform in government.

I am sure the tax and spend Republicans of this state will find more ways to wrest that shiny nickle out of Utahn's pocketbooks. Have tehy considered taxing breathing because of the CO2 emissions people let out? How about a pee and poop tax?

THe real question is what sort of raise will our wonderful serve us legislature get for all their hard work for us?

Instead of looking for anexcuse to impose us with "another" tax, how about reducing government; say, to basic needed services ONLY? There's only so much weight we can bear. Enough new taxes - cut, cut, cut!

What about tapping the $600 million "rainy day fund"? Do we think it is "rainy" yet. If you truly want anarchy, let's deprive the poor of welfare and the children of an education. Then we can lose businesses at a faster rate because no business will relocate to Yewtaw (sorry for the spelling, we just cut education again, also in your comment s-t-a-g-n-a-n-t). With respect to "illegals", be careful what you wish for as our society employs these diligent workers by the tens of thousands, without them, we will not be able to offer huge sections of business or government services. Try volunteering at your local elementary school, volunteer to form an art foundation and donate the supplies to school, assist an ESL student with his education, go to a shelter and feed the homeless regularly. In short, regain and rethink. When finished, go support your local high school teams and donate to their athletic programs, which are surely going to be cut with the shortfall.

Yours is a "got mine, let's cut everybody after me" attitude. Adjust your perspective. PS until then, I'm glad you're not a legislator.

I am guessing we will not see cuts to legislative pay or benefits and yet last year every other public employees took cuts on pay and/or benefits. Stop the lifetime insurance and retirement for our legislators. They are not full time legislators and make money elsewhere. Why should we be giving them golden parachutes for serving as a legislator?
Our legislators should stop passing so many laws they know will end up in court and waste our tax payer money trying to fight for those laws. Stop putting in legislature that creates bigger government through laws that cost a lot to actually enforce- walls in restaurants hiding alcohol and other nonsense like that.
Stop government waste.

A sales tax on service is a terrible policy. It will be a disincentive to the use of professionals and hurt our already struggling economy.

Nice, so many of us are in hard times and the wise people up on the hill just want to inflict more pain.

Good thinking guys!

Could have fooled me! We live in the era of big controlling government. Over 300 new laws were passed in Utah's last legislative session. Everything we do is regulated. Freedom is lost. Utah is one of the most fiscally liberal states in the country. Utah spends, spends, spends, and now lawmakers are wondering why they're having trouble paying for it all. It's like watching a young couple get in debt over their ears but they still keep having children.

How can a sales tax on services be a terrible policy. It the only policy we have left since we have destroyed our manufacturing and any income building industry to be replaced by services that only redistribute money not create it.

I say - raise the tobacco tax - the societal cost of a pack of cigarettes today is above $10 per pack (as determined by the CDC), yet we only add a tax of 69.5 cents. In Utah the non-smokers subsidize the smoker significantly including the extra health care costs required by the smoker. Let us raise the tobacco tax - it will raise needed revenue while encouraging current smokers to stop and our children not to start - and in the long run reducing our health care costs - thus it is a win-win. If a person wants to smoke - that is his/her choice - but please do not ask the non-smokers to continue to subsidize your activity.

I think it is an abomination to tax food period, let alone consider raising the tax. Food is a major expense for every person, and not something that you can cut to meet the budget (although I'm sure many do and go hungry).

I agree with cut, cut, cut -- scale back government programs.

Humankind is still trying to figure out how to replace a dictator (the "arch") ruling others with self-rule.

We govern ourselves in an orderly way everyday, without the assistance of legislated guidance and bureaucratic oversight ... at the implied point of a gun.

Separating school and state -- there are plenty of resources out there for parents to homeschool their children or educate them through proprietary schools -- would deliver the cuts necessary to close the budget gap.

Lets see, they have raised my property tax, federal taxes, my health insurance by 42% per month to where those of us on fixed incomes are wondering where we will get money for doctors, food and housing. Why not raise taxes more and put people like us out on the street. This is just getting altogether out of hand. Stop the taxing and start cutting your own salaries, make cuts, cuts, cuts to state government services. We cannot afford anymore taxes. There is only so much a fixed income can handle and we are there.

So, business gets to itemize "business inputs" completely on their federal taxes and now our legislators want to make those purchases exempt from sales tax as well?

AND PAY FOR IT BY INCREASING TAXES ON FAMILIES?

Another tax,that will solve the problem. It cannot be that the government is simply too large, oh no not that. It must be that the unwashed slobs are not paying enough. Let's tax them for the number of rubber duckies, bought, that will do it. And next year, when we deem it so, we will tax pencils. It does not matter why, just because, we can always make up a story as to why, later.

Good points and I agree. People need to start living healthier lifestyles in the US if we ever want to cut down health care costs. I say if increasing taxes encourages people to live healthier and cost us less then lets raise them.

I would suspect that the commenters above are the first to complain where there are: potholes in the roads, water lines that don't work, higher medical premiums, large class sizes at school, old slow computers at public libraries, higher prices at high school football games, higher tuition costs at state-sponsored schools.

People want the same level of service at half the cost.