By Glenn Hamer | Chamber Business News
You’ve likely seen the new television ad from the pro-Proposition 208 campaign. In case you’ve forgotten, Proposition 208 is the initiative to raise Arizona’s top income tax rate from 4.5% to 8%–a 77.7% increase.
If you haven’t been following the back and forth over this initiative, you’re forgiven if you didn’t know its central provision amounts to the largest tax increase in Arizona history. The TV ad doesn’t mention it at all.
Instead, viewers are told that the initiative would restore education funding. Left out of the script is that Proposition 208’s tax increase on small business would deliver such a shock to state revenues that future education funding would be put at tremendous risk. Also left out is that early childhood, community colleges, and universities are left with peanuts.
