South Carolina can't afford tuition tax credits

e-mail this story discuss this issue in our forums Guest column • Earle Oxner: South Carolina can't afford tuition tax credits (02/02/05) • James Bache: Water System fees unfairly burden county residents (02/02/05) • Sen. Jim DeMint: Gonzales should be confirmed (02/01/05) • Kelly Frazier: Healthy living is about good habits (02/01/05) • Joyce Fishman Klein: No time for complacency about teen pregnancy (01/31/05) More details Earle Oxner works at Datastream Systems, Inc. as the director of financial integration. He serves on the board of directors for The Alliance For Quality Education.

There are approximately 66,000 of us statewide who will want this tax credit. Not all of us will be eligible but when you look at the fact that 95 percent of people who filed income taxes last year would qualify for this, I believe that many of my fellow private school and home school parents will qualify. If you were to only look at 50 percent of us qualifying, the cost would be roughly $100 million and I expect that to be much higher.

Proponents of the bill state that there are cost savings in the public schools that will pay for this. The problem with that argument is that my children don't have any state cost attached to them now because they already go to private school. The tax credit I would receive would simply be a gift with no state expense savings to cover the cost.

I am a big Republican, I believe in fiscal responsibility and our state has one of the lowest tax bases in the nation so we have to be careful to fund the items that matter most to us. I do not want to raise taxes and I don't see at least $100 million anywhere in the current state budget to fund this. It seems like every day I see something in the paper regarding budget cuts and the important services that will lose funding. The problem is that if we don't fund the things that matter, companies will not want to do business here. We simply can't afford this legislation.