Posted 5/31/2010 12:53:00 PM by Douglas

So Texas, like every other state, is broke. So they're looking for money, and as usual when a government goes trolling for new people to tax, some people are going to be pissed off about it.

AUSTIN — From car washes to tattoos to bottled water, the list of items and services exempt from the sales tax totals $30 billion in forgone revenue — a tempting target for some lawmakers as the state faces a budget gap as big as $18 billion.

Take aim at a tax exemption, however, and you quickly will find interests circling the wagons to preserve it, plus lawmakers resistant to raising money in a piecemeal fashion or increasing tax revenue at all.

Well that's the trick that makes a good politician a great politician, right? Taxing other people to pay for the shit YOU want. Taxing bottled water because it's trendy and not food is pure genius, but I'm not sure why tattoos and tanning isn't. Every other service I can think of is taxed, what's special about those?

“That's going to really upset me, actually. That will affect me financially,” said Antone Pham, a tattoo artist at the Texas Tattoo Emporium in Houston. “People already complain about how much tattoos cost sometimes. I'm going to tack a tax on to that? That's going to make it harder for me to even make money.”

Wow, what a compelling argument. "My customers don't want to pay it." Who could argue with that salient argument. But it IS a tax increase when you tax something that wasn't previously taxed, right?

“Taking away an exemption from someone who no longer deserves it isn't a tax increase.” he said. “I just don't see how we can, at this point, bind ourselves to being revenue-neutral, when we have not seen the drastic cuts that are going to be required to deal with an $18 billion deficit. I couldn't agree to that now.”

Wow, again, who could argue with that?

I wonder when someone is going to propose eliminating the property tax exemption on churches?