TAXES: Make up your mind, Idaho

It seems the only requirement to be elected in Idaho is to be a mathematically challenged Republican. I speak of the push to get rid of the corporate personal property tax, which would blow a $141 million hole in local county budgets. This money would go right to education and local services, but it seems corporations deserve a free ride while the average citizens pick up that tab in the form of “local option” sales taxes, increased school levies, and higher property taxes.

A quick recap: Your representatives cut $200 million in education and called it “a balanced budget without raising taxes,” then floated another school levy which raised property taxes.

Idaho charges fees for car registration, recreation, hunting, etc., then hits taxpayers with a property tax, an income tax, a sales tax, and worst of all a food tax. What “family values” government taxes the basic human need of food and then plays a nice little game of three card monte with a grocery credit? When exactly does this “low tax” Republican philosophy kick in? If you’re a large corporation in Idaho, it kicks in all year.

Maybe instead of making racist remarks our representatives should take a humanities class and follow it up with a course in basic math, but then again I’m sure they are well aware of whom they are taxing and what they are cutting.

CHAD SOLSVIK

Coeur d’Alene