Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Tax Plan’s Weird

But the leaked details on the income tax and sales tax proposals make no sense. Most experts will tell you that one of the biggest problems in Pennsylvania is income inequality — and our tax policy contributes to that. (The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ranks Pennsylvania as the 8th most regressive state in the nation.)

Our current flat income tax — a conservative wet dream — means that the CEO of Comcast pays state income taxes as the same rate as the janitor that cleans his office. The massive change that’s needed is a move to a progressive tax, so that the wealthy pay a bigger share. And higher sales taxes are a non-starter — especially if the taxes are expanded to more family necessities such as clothing, as some reports have suggested. The sales tax is the most regressive tax in the fiscal toolbox — falling heaviest on the poor who spend a greater share of their income on basic goods.