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Show I . - . No Sales Tax' j . .. Measure Unjust; Burden On People Must Be Reduced Rather Than Increased;- Cut Operating Expenses (Editorial) but has been in addition to other taxes. The sales t;yt is recognized as. a failure fail-ure almost everywhere it has been tried. Franklin D. Roosevelt has refused re-fused to consider a sales tax as a budget-balancer ; for the federal govern-ment. govern-ment. Canada is seeking to abolish its sales tax berjuise it has not done what its advocates said it would do, that is, raise a sum adequate for the relief of other taxes. . The sales tax hurts the state by keeping new industries out and driving others away..; It has never raised sufficient suf-ficient funds-, and works serious harm on border cities whose residents will do their buying free of tax in neighbor states. ifc THE HERALD has repeatedly told its readers it would dedicate its resources re-sources and influence to a battle against high taxes, public waste and extravagance. With this pledge in mind, it declares itself unalterably opposed to the sales tax measure introduced a few days ago in the state legislature. ; The intention of the bill is to substitute the unjust sales tax for the just income tax. Let's analyze it, a little. The sales tax is proposed now as always as a . 'plan to lift the burden of taxation from real property, in this case, from the farm. The farmer of Utah is the biggest big-gest taxpayer in the state, as a group. . But bear in mind the fact that he is. also the biggest buyer of goods, hard times or no hard times. GOVERNMENT is the only business in the world which can," when faced with a deficit, go forth and demand de-mand new revenues to balance its budget. bud-get. Private business and industry, enjoying en-joying no such prerogative, knows only one way out to curtail expenses until they do not exceed the revenues. Politicians accustomed to free use of taxpayers' money, will never learn that this fundamental business principle should be applied in government. Instead, In-stead, they seek the easy way out the levying of additional taxes. WE still live in an era of tax-spending orgies, a carry-over from the days when money and work were plentiful. plen-tiful. We have commissions, bureaus " 'and departments which have long since outlived their usefulness, but cannot be discontinued because somebody would lose a fat job. We believe Governor Blood is anxious to institute real economy which can be done if he gets the proper support from the legislature. lie is interested primarily pri-marily in reducing state expenditures, not new ways of raising taxes. If the legislature meekly toes the line and saddles the sales tax on the farmers farm-ers and working men of Utah, allowing the man who is best able to pay to escape, es-cape, there is bound to be a loud and effective protest from the tax-harassed people of the state. The sales tax should be killed! If a sales tax were put into effect tomorrow, the farmer would pay the heavy end of it. The main purpose of the sales tax would be defeated before the law even started. And as business picks up and times get better which we all hope for the farmer would pay an ever-increasing proportion of that sales tax load, as he buys the many things he has done without for several years. If this newspaper believed a sales tax .would provide any relief at all for the farmer in his crucial tax problem, it would urge the immediate passage of such a law. :J: : . WE too, believe that eventually the . property, tax- should be abolished...... But it should be replaced not by the-clisci'iminatory the-clisci'iminatory sales tax but by the . income tax, the only fair tax yet devised. de-vised. The sales tax falls heaviest, not on the shoulders of those best able to bear the load, but on the consumers, many of whom cannot now buy the necessities necessi-ties of life, let alone meet their present tax' bills. The sales tax is not an answer to our problem. It is merely a palliative a "shot in the arm" beset with the usual train of ill after-effects of such remedies. In other states, where a sales tax has been put into effect "in lieu" of other taxes, it has never been "in lieu" |