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Show Family's Taxes Pay Only Half The Cost Of Benefits ortion taxes paid to cost of benefits. be-nefits. "It should be kept in mind that all of this discussion of tax-benefit ratios has been based on the assumption lh.it government services would be furnished through existing facilities and organizational structure." the Foundation notes. "IF AN influx of new government gov-ernment employees were sufficiently suffi-ciently large to require significant signifi-cant expansion of staffs and of physical facilities, the impact on the local community would be much greater. The impact on the state and on local communities com-munities could be enormous. " State and local taxes paid by a typical family in Utah cover only about half the cost of state and local government services furnished to the family, according to Utah Foundation, Founda-tion, the private, non-profit research re-search organization. "NORMALLY THE other half of the cost is covered by taxes paid by the employer of working members of the family," fami-ly," the Foundation notes in a Research Brief released this week. "If the employer does not pay taxes as. for example, the Federal government does not then half the cost of benefits be-nefits received by employees and their families must be made up by the rest of the community, com-munity, both individual taxpayers tax-payers and business and industry." in-dustry." A LARGE influx of Federal government employees into Utah thus would impose severe se-vere financial strain on state and local government units, the Foundation points out. However, if a large number of new people were brought into the state by establishment of a new industry, or expan sion of an existing Utah industry, indus-try, the situation would be different, dif-ferent, due to the taxes paid by employers. IN ARRIVING at these conclusions, con-clusions, Utah Foundation examined ex-amined the state and local taxes paid and the state and local government-provided benefits received by a typical family of four living in Salt Lake City in 1980. The "typical" family was assumed to have an annual income in-come of $20,000, and to own a house with a market value of $60,000 (assessed value $11,376 according to average 1980 assessment ratios in Salt Lake City). THE FAMILY is also assumed to own a two-year-old car with market value of $4,000 (assessed value $800) which is driven 11.000 miles during the course of the year, at an average of 15 miles per gallon of gasoline. Property taxes on house and car are figured fi-gured at the 68 .9 1 -mill rate that applied to most of Salt Lake City in 1980. Benefits provided to the family are calculated by taking total expenditures of the state. Salt Lake County. Salt Lake City and Salt Lake School District Dis-trict and substracting from them all federal money and non-tax revenues. The net sums are calculated on a per capita basis, using 1980 census figures, and multiplied by four to obtain the family's share of benefits. SCHOOL BENEFITS are figured fi-gured in this way on the theory that school serv ices benefit the community in general. If school benefits were calculated calcu-lated on the basis of money spent per pupil, and pro-rated for the family's two school-age children, the benefits would be more than double those used in the comparison ($4,632 compared com-pared to $1,327). State and local taes for a Salt Lake City family as described de-scribed would have totalled $2,082 in 1980. while state and local benefits received would have been $4,120. Taxes paid directly by the family would cover just over half the cost of benefits received. COMPARABLE studies done by Utah Foundation in 1955, I960 and 1968 showed approximately the same prop- |