Stay Cool, Senators

Tax-activist campaign can't obscure harm eliminating property taxes could cause

Readers who haven't logged on to http://www.nohometax.org/ to hear the new anti-property-tax radio spiel aimed at the S.C. Senate should plan to do so. Listeners will hear a pitch for special tax treatment that willfully ignores the potential harm that tax shifts would cause to others.

The one-minute spot, now airing on radio stations in Charleston, Greenville and Columbia, portrays S.C. senators who resist eliminating residential property taxes as captives of the special interests who don't care about the tax misery of S.C. homeowners. At the Capitol in Columbia, anti-tax activists are targeting senators who don't support eliminating residential property taxes for punitive voter action at election time - though S.C. senators don't face the voters again until 2008. The cause of the activists' ire is that senators seem in no hurry to enact a tax-reform bill.

Earlier in the 2006 legislative session, in contrast, S.C. House members needed only a few weeks to grind out a property-tax-elimination bill that raises sales taxes 2 cents to generate replacement revenue. In representatives' haste to appease property owners complaining that rising home market values drove up their tax bills, the House:

shifted a big chunk of the S.C. tax burden downhill to low-income residents;

weakened local governments and school districts' control of their own financial affairs;

raised the cost of doing business for S.C. small businesses;

increased property-tax pressure on all businesses and industries;

raised the cost of S.C. vacations, including Grand Strand vacations.

Unlike House members, members of the Senate committee that worked through property-tax reform discovered it's virtually impossible to relieve one class of taxpayers without harming all other classes of taxpayers. The committee, which focused principally on eliminating the property tax for schools, was unable to come up with a tax-relief bill in which members had great confidence. The full Senate, which took up the matter last week, has had the same problem.

Anti-property-tax activists see chicanery in the Senate's "dithering" on the issue. With some senators, maybe that's true. As the nohometax.org radio spot alleges, maybe some are playing games with the issue because "special interests" don't like the bill, and because they've forgotten about voters' interests.

But most of the senators who decline blow up the S.C. taxation system, we would wager, are not playing games. They worry that massive tax relief for unhappy homeowners would harm the S.C. business climate, school districts and local governments while raising taxes on residents who don't deserve it.

The Senate is doing what all senates, state and federal, are designed to do: acting as a cool, thoughtful counterbalance to the passions of the House. In that sense, it is good that senators aren't up for re-election this year, which fact should further embolden them to ignore rabble-rousing pressure as they strive to do the right thing.