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Week in Review: Trillion-Dollar Tax Hike Schemes? Let's Shoot for 0% Instead

February 19, 2022

February 19, 2022

Washington politicians are scheming to raise taxes by billions—even trillions—of dollars. There’s a better way, and as states cut income tax rates left and right, the Goldwater Institute is leading by example to make sure Americans keep more of their hard-earned money.

At least 10 states “have begun the march” to a 0 percent income tax rate, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, a Goldwater board member, writes in The Wall Street Journal. In his op-ed, Norquist highlights Goldwater’s massive victory last year in the Arizona Legislature, where we won the battle for a 2.5 percent flat income tax rate to make Arizona one of the lowest-tax states in the nation. States are realizing they need to compete so they can “provide the best government at the lowest cost,” Norquist adds, advising Washington lawmakers to “learn from these examples.”

Protecting taxpayers’ rights doesn’t stop with cutting income taxes. That’s why we’re going to bat for Halstead Bead, a family-owned small business that’s spent a whopping 7,700 hours and $297,000 to comply with onerous sales tax regulations for oft far-away jurisdictions. Halstead Bead even avoids selling to Louisianans, because Louisiana forces businesses to follow sales tax regulations for each of the state’s individual jurisdictions. We’re teaming up with the National Taxpayers Union Foundation and the Pelican Institute to sue Louisiana, and we filed a response brief this week demonstrating just how unconstitutional this sales tax scheme is.

Read more about the Louisiana case at In Defense of Liberty, and read Norquist’s full op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

You Shouldn’t Have to Move Overseas to Save Your Child’s Life

Three-year-old Keira has a fatal disease. Though cutting-edge, personalized gene therapy was available, she couldn’t access it in the U.S. because it doesn’t fit within the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) outdated clinical trial system. But without it, Keira had little chance of surviving her childhood.

Her story underscores the need for Goldwater’s Right to Try for Individualized Treatments legislation, a reform that we’re working to pass in states across the country. This law protects patients’ right to try potentially life-saving treatments, Keira’s mom, Kendra Riley, writes in the Arizona Capitol Times.

Keira was able to access the treatment she needed—but her family had to move to Italy to get it. “Families shouldn’t have to travel overseas to save their children’s lives,” Kendra says. “Nor should they be sent home to watch their children die, even though promising treatment options exist. That’s why we need the Right to Try for Individualized Treatments.”

Read the rest in the Arizona Capitol Times.

Tired: Radical Politics in Schools. Wired: Transparency.

Public schools obsessed with left-wing political indoctrination are not being truthful with parents, says former California teacher Kali Fontanilla. But there’s a way to make things right: Goldwater’s academic transparency reform.

Kali’s testimony flies in the face of assurances from public school officials, left-wing activist groups, and the mainstream media that Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other radical racial dogmas are not being taught in schools. “Just about every single lesson had some element of Critical Race Theory in it,” she writes in The Orange County Register of her school’s mandatory ethnic studies class, before detailing lessons about the so-called “four I’s of oppression,” an activity where children ranked their identities using colored strings and “intersectional rainbows,” and a “privilege quiz.”

“Not only are public schools force-feeding these lies to students, but they’re also keeping parents in the dark,” Kali says, calling on lawmakers to arm parents with knowledge by passing legislation that requires public schools to post a listing of their learning materials online. “The Academic Transparency Act, a reform developed by the Goldwater Institute, would do just that.”

Read the rest at The Orange County Register.

 

 

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