EVERY MISSOURIAN NEEDS A TAX BREAK

Imagine, if you will, this scenario: Next year, when you prepare your federal income-tax returns, you discover that you have had too much withheld during the year and are due a $1,000 refund. That's the good news. So you file your tax return, and here comes a letter from the IRS with good news -- and some bad news. The good news is that, indeed, you paid $1,000 too much in withholding. But the bad news is you won't be getting a refund. Instead, the government will give your refund to other taxpayers who earn less and who don't even owe the government any money.

How do you like that?

In a nutshell, this is exactly what Gov. Mel Carnahan and some Democratic leaders around the state are proposing to do in Missouri to avoid the Hancock Amendment's limits on state revenue. Instead of giving every taxpayer a break, only those who fall within certain income guidelines -- generally below $25,000 to $27,000 -- or the elderly would get a credit on their state taxes based on the local property taxes or rent they pay.

Never mind that the bulk of the overpayments the state has been raking in -- and has yet to refund to taxpayers as required by law -- came from taxpayers who make more than $27,000 and from businesses who pay corporate income taxes. But the gurus in the Carnahan administration hope more affluent taxpayers will feel warm and fuzzy about tax credits for lower-income Missourians and the elderly and won't mind not benefiting from the tax relief to which they are entitled.

The state already has collected between $700 million and $1.3 billion too much in revenue, depending on who is calculating the overpayment. So far, not one dime of that money, which rightfully belongs to the state's taxpayers in the form of refunds, has been paid. This year, the General Assembly approved the elimination of state sales tax on groceries, but that was to avoid further overpayments to the state and had nothing to do with the millions of dollars waiting to be returned in order to satisfy the Hancock Amendment's limits.

Keep in mind that this amazing proposal from the governor's office follows on the heels of a doomed idea to spend the excess state revenue rather than return it to taxpayers. Several weeks ago trial balloons were sent up around the state to see if taxpayers would allow the state to keep the millions of dollars and spend them on highway improvements and other capital projects. The answer was a resounding no, and that plan was quickly abandoned.

Taxpayers and voters are the same people. What is so mystifying is why Missourians don't vote like taxpayers. With the recent history of total disregard for timely refunds in tax overpayments, voters should be demanding, through the ballot box, major changes in representation and leadership. Yet the Democrats, who want to find ways -- and have succeeded quite well, based on growth in the state budget -- to spend more and more, continue to dominate both chambers of the General Assembly as well as most of the statewide offices.

It looks like the only way for Missourians to get what they are entitled to -- tax relief -- is to make that clear in future elections.