To the Editor:
Last week in his piece “Tax Cuts Favor the Rich?” David Trahan, in an attempt to “educate us” about taxes, asserts that Maine’s wealthiest individuals actually pay the lion’s share of income taxes in the state of Maine, and uses this as a justification for the tax cuts to the top 20 percent earners in the state.
While this may be true, it seems that the former senator left out a very important point: income tax is only one aspect of the tax code in Maine. It completely ignores the taxes that, as a percentage of income, fall heaviest on those outside the top earners, the sales tax, and especially the property tax.
According to a study done by the Maine Revenue Services (MRS), the effective rate for all state and local taxes paid by the middle 20 percent of families is 12 cents on the dollar, and the bottom 20 percent of families pay 17 cents out of every dollar earned. Compare this to the top 1 percent of earners who pay 10 cents for every dollar earned.
Yet this is the group that former Senator Trahan admits will reap the biggest benefit from the new tax cuts.
The big picture here is that when taking into account all forms of taxes, not just income tax, the tax system in Maine is not a fair one. Senator Johnson was right to suppose that the recent tax cuts favor the rich and make a real problem even worse.
Stan Lane, Westport Island
