Sound and Fury over Taxes

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Stan Akers, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee: "There is a general feeling of 'I've had too damned much' among people who want high taxes to come to a screeching halt. I wouldn't blame them if they wanted something like the Jarvis amendment here." The legislature may freeze property assessments at 1977 levels and re-examine assessing and taxing procedures.

MICHIGAN. A move to limit state spending won a respectable 43% vote in 1976, and is given a good chance of approval this year. State and local taxes now consume 9.7% of total personal income in Michigan, compared with 6.7% ten years ago. Viewing California's action as too drastic, Petition Leader Richard Headlee, a former director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says his goal is to seek "progressive, responsible, accountable government, which can only grow as the economy in the state grows."

MASSACHUSETTS. The plight of the average Massachusetts taxpayer is even worse than that of his California counterpart. So great is the burden that protesters call the state "Taxachusetts." The property tax averages 4.7% of market value for a variety of historic reasons. Slow to adopt modern sales and income taxes, the state has relied too heavily on the property tax. Moreover, its charitable attitude toward churches and higher education produced an unusually high proportion of tax-exempt property, especially in Boston. At the same time, liberal Massachusetts provides more services for victims of poverty and disease than do most other states. More recently, its industrial base has been declining. Massachusetts thus is in a tax dilemma, with several widely varying solutions locked in conflict.

Nor is that all. In Delaware, Republican Governor Pierre S. duPont and his Democratic Lieutenant Governor two weeks ago proposed an amendment to the state constitution requiring a three-fifths vote by the legislature to raise any taxes; their goal is to prevent "midnight raids" on taxpayers by politicians trying to make fiscal ends meet. Maryland last month put through what one lawmaker calls "the most far-reaching program of property tax relief in 200 years." Three Florida state senators have announced that they will try to get a Jarvis-type proposal on the ballot for November. In Texas, Republican Gubernatorial Nominee Bill Clements is calling for an "ironclad limitation on taxation and the growth of government spending."

Plainly, the tax-quake is not limited to California. But why did it strike with such terrific force there? Tax experts point to the fact that California still relies more heavily than most states on real estate taxes, not only to finance fire, police and schools but also for welfare, Medicare and Medicaid. Observes John Shannon, assistant director of Washington's Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations: "Most states have relieved the property tax of that welfare burden. In California, they send a small boy out to do a man's job."

The California tax, moreover, has been spiraling. The property tax in 1942 amounted to $32 for every $1,000 of personal income in the state, only 89% of the national average. By 1976 it had leaped to $63, or 142% of the national norm. Only in Alaska* and New York has the overall state and local tax burden gone higher. Nationwide, taxes of all kinds —