THE LEGISLATIVE session is half over, and there has not been the first subcommittee meeting on proposals to overhaul the state’s tax system. The long-promised rewrite of the most comprehensive proposal, a bill by Rep. Rick Quinn and Sen. Vincent Sheheen to lower property and income taxes, raise the sales tax and eliminate a number of tax exemptions, has never materialized. And on Wednesday, the House passed the governor’s income tax reduction bill, which many reform proponents are convinced will suck any remaining life out of the larger effort to make our tax system make sense.

It has not, to say the least, been a good start to the most promising effort in a decade to bring some logic to the way we raise taxes in South Carolina.

Like legislators and lobbyists and ordinary citizens across the state, my colleagues and I on the editorial board have gradually become convinced that nothing is going to happen this year. We slowed down the pace of our ambitious examination of the tax code, pushing planned editorials and columns back each week as we decided that some other legislative matter more urgently needed the time and attention we would be devoting to an issue that was going nowhere. We intend to complete the review, but on a more elongated schedule.

But Rep. Quinn and Sen. Sheheen insist that the widespread public perception is wrong. They say they have been working quietly behind the scenes to drum up support for their efforts and that they plan to regroup and resume their speaking schedule around the state as early as this week.

On the day nearly everybody in the House signed on as a sponsor of the income tax bill (the provisions of which are contained in the far broader Quinn-Sheheen measure), Mr. Sheheen told me he planned to use that legislation as a springboard to revive the fledgling reform effort.

Last week, Mr. Quinn said he expects a subcommittee to start work on his bill by next week. He hopes either his bill or a more modest proposal by House Ways and Means Chairman Bobby Harrell will make it to the full House for debate by early April; while Mr. Harrell’s bill falls far short of being comprehensive, it could serve as a vehicle for a broader reform effort. (Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman also plans to hold a subcommittee meeting next week, on another limited reform proposal, although he sees little chance of anything passing this year.)

The Quinn-Sheheen proposal isn’t perfect; far from it. In fact, my colleagues and I aren’t even sure that we support it. But it is the first serious tax proposal we’ve seen since an abortive 1994 effort that acknowledges this central truth: The various taxes levied by state and local governments are all part of an integrally related system, and when you raise or lower one tax, you change the entire system. It is the refusal on the part of legislators to acknowledge this fact that has led to a bizarre tax system that is largely defined by its loopholes and that has gradually shifted the tax burden in ways we don’t even understand, much less intend.

No one is going to propose a perfect way of reforming the system; the starting point of any real debate is going to be imperfect. But if we don’t even make it to that starting point, we will never improve anything.

Some of their fellow reformers grumble that the reform effort stalled because its chief architects became distracted — Mr. Quinn with the birth of his first child, and Mr. Sheheen with the special election he won earlier this year to move from the House to the Senate. But while Mr. Quinn acknowledges getting sidelined, both he and Mr. Sheheen say they have managed to keep working with individual legislators, and they believe they have generated strong rank-and-file support, at least in the House.

Mr. Sheheen says the biggest thing that has slowed tax reform momentum was Gov. Mark Sanford’s strong push for a stand-alone income tax cut. That’s something the governor has been pushing for some time; what changed earlier this year was that the House leadership joined his effort, and thereby changed the focus of the tax debate. Mr. Quinn, on the other hand, thinks House passage of the Sanford plan should make it easier to rebuild momentum for actual reform, by easing the governor’s unfounded worry that Quinn-Sheheen is a competitor.

But both men are convinced that even if their efforts fail this year — a prospect that seems likely, their optimism notwithstanding — it’s only a matter of time before real tax reform comes to South Carolina.

“I do think that for a variety of reasons, not all of which I agree with, the public has become more and more engaged over the last several months over the issue of the way we tax in South Carolina,” Mr. Sheheen said.

Adds Mr. Quinn: “The public sentiment about property tax is what’s going to make this thing happen or not happen, and I don’t think that goes away. We have to latch onto that and use it as the impetus to change the tax structure.”

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.