Asheville Citizen-Times: Long-term tax shifts may hit rich and poor differently

North Carolina’s sales tax law has loopholes large enough to drive a truck through — or sail a boat, pilot an airplane or guide a train.

Or pull a wood chipper through, provided it is intended for use out of state.

Each of those items gets preferential treatment under the law, underlining difficulties with a long-term goal of members of the state Senate to rely more on sales tax and less on other taxes to operate state government.

…

North Carolina’s sales tax is unfair because it “requires the least from those with the most,” said Meg Wiehe, state tax policy director at the national Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which leans to the left. And because it exempts services and falls less heavily on the rich, the sales tax by itself will not grow enough to fund needed state services in the future, she said. Read More

---

---