Should selected groups of Minnesotans be excused from paying taxes?

In a fair state, where everyone is equal under the law, the answer should be obvious. While the tax code is undoubtedly riddled with tax breaks of all shapes and sizes, this state has never exempted whole categories of its residents from having to pay taxes. We wouldn’t exempt farmers, for example, from having to pay property taxes, just as we wouldn’t exempt bankers from the sales tax.

But GOP gubernatorial candidate, and Tea Party favorite, Tom Emmer doesn’t see it that way. He’s already announced his support for exempting two groups—restaurant servers and retired veterans—from the state’s income tax.

In both cases, Emmer’s proposal appears utterly arbitrary, and intended more to pander to select groups of prospective voters than achieve a coherent policy objective.

Emmer’s suggested tax exemption for waiters and waitresses was clearly about damage control. Earlier this month, Emmer alienated one of the largest single categories of workers in the state when he suggested that restaurant owners should be able to count tips for their wait staff against their base wages. Emmer defended his proposal, claiming that he knew a number of waiters and waitresses who made $100,000 a year or more.

The proposal and the suggestion that serves were raking it in, was widely panned as ridiculous, and it drew the immediate ire of many of the thousands and thousands of waiters and waitresses working all across Minnesota. The whole thing quickly turned to farce, when Emmer responded to the outcry by suggesting that servers shouldn’t have to pay income taxes on their tips.

In Tom Emmer’s world, it’s apparently logical to suggest one day that restaurant servers are making big bucks, and in the next breath, suggesting they should be excused from income taxes.

Of course, in truth, most servers are already exempt from the income tax because like most low-to-moderate income workers, they don’t earn enough to actually pay income taxes. So the only real beneficiaries of Emmer’s proposal would be those servers who actually do well, or who don’t have families to feed—in other words those who are the least in need of a tax break.

Emmer’s pander to veterans was only slightly more coherent from a policy perspective. Emmer’s theory is that exempting military retirement benefits from the income tax will encourage more veterans to retire in Minnesota. That may be true, but if so, the same would apply to any group of retirees. Why not exempt retired cops, or firefighters, agriculture extension workers, or anyone else who has served the public with distinction? Wouldn’t their retirement paychecks help boost Minnesota’s economy as much as a vet’s?

Let’s be clear. Our suggestion is merely for the sake of argument. We certainly don’t advocate such a policy. At a time when the state is facing an unprecedented budget challenge, we need everybody pulling their weight. Giving this group or that group an exemption from certain taxes undermines the concept that we’re all in this together. And by focusing on income tax exemptions, Emmer is only exacerbating the inequities that are already built into the state’s tax system, and which hit low income workers harder than those at the very top. Emmer’s proposal for veterans would do nothing for veterans who get by on modest pensions. Only those who enjoy relatively lavish Pentagon benefits would benefit from Emmer’s plan.

But that’s the way it goes with Republican candidates, who always seem more interested in comforting the already-comfortable than in doing anything to help the rest of us gain a foothold on the American Dream.

Unstated in Emmer’s pandering proposals is that exempting select groups from the income tax comes with a real cost, one that will be paid by further cuts in K-12 education, higher tuition prices at public colleges and universities, and further deterioration of the state’s roads and bridges. It also means higher local property taxes, which claim a bigger percentage of the incomes of low and moderate income workers than does the income tax.

Emmer is revealing his true stripes, and they are remarkably similar to those of our current governor. And that’s certainly no improvement. Minnesotans deserve better.