LETTERS: TAX JUSTICE ALLIANCE STRONGLY OPPOSES HANCOCK AMENDMENT

To the editor:

Missourians for Tax Justice, a statewide alliance of organizations and individuals who are working for a fair state tax system, is strongly opposed to Amendment 7, the Hancock II amendment on the November 8 ballot.

Some citizens who support the amendment have obviously been misled about the education tax measure (Senate Bill 380) passed by the Legislature with Gov. Carnahan's leadership in 1993. In enacting this bill, our legislators and governor accomplished several things:

(1) They responded positively to the Circuit Court ruling that said our public schools are a state responsibility and the state's funding of the public schools was not equitable or adequate. Senate Bill 380 gave us a new school funds distribution formula to accomplish fairness in funding, and some state tax changes to produce the money needed to make school funding more adequate.

(2) To produce these additional funds, they gave us tax changes that actually make our state tax system more fair! The increase fell on corporations and on people with higher incomes. With the individual income tax, only married taxpayers with adjusted gross income of over $70,000 have any increase; for single taxpayers, the increase falls primarily on those with adjusted gross income of over $40,00. Note: this is not actual income, but "adjusted gross income."

Since our state income tax structure has not required higher income taxpayers to pay a fair share, Senate Bill 380's tax changes should be applauded. There was no increase in the regressive sales tax, which was a big part of the Proposition B education tax proposal rejected by the voters in Nov. 1991. In opposing Proposition B, citizens asked for an alternative with a fair means to raise the money needed for education. This is what our elected officials gave us.

Support of the destructive Amendment 7 is not the way to accomplish tax justice. Only continued progressive reform of our state tax system will give us the kind of fair taxes that Missourians want and deserve. We urge citizens to vote no on Amendment 7 and join us in that effort.

PAT MARTIN

Chairperson, Missourians for Tax Justice

St. Louis