Center for Colorado’s Economic Future Director Charlie Brown said that, for example, the proposed elevated income tax rates would land in the middle of the rates in place in the ten “inter-mountain states,” by which he means Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, Montana, Utah and Wyoming. He added that, once full comparison research has been completed by the Center, he believes the “more productive” graduated income tax rates proposed for Colorado will “compare favorably to [the income tax rates of] the other states except for [Wyoming],” which has no income tax.

Brown said Colorado’s low sales tax rate would remain as is in the scenario drawn up by the researchers but that it would be broadened to include personal services, like pet grooming and auto repair. The fact that Colorado’s sales tax rate is lower than all of the other nine states considered, except Montana, which has no sales tax, would mean that in Colorado the “per capita burden would [remain] unquestionably competitive.”

Brown also believes that the research will show that the Center’s proposed property tax adjustments, including a uniform state-wide mill levy, will help clean up “the mess” that is the state’s present system and that it will deliver “per capita burdens that would be favorable over all.”

Details on these kinds of comparisons will appear in the Center’s full narrative report due out in the coming weeks.

Relevant excerpts from Brown’s email responding to questions sent by the Colorado Independent:

[O]n the individual income tax, of the 10 states in the intermountain west, our proposed rates would fall in the middle of the graduated rates of those states. Of the 10 states, 9 have an income tax (Wyoming, with its big revenue producing severance tax, has no income tax). Our rates would compare favorably to ID, KS, MT, and NE. AZ and NM have  lower top rates, and UT has a flat rate of 5%. In all cases, the brackets are substantially lower than the ones we propose, so more of their taxpayers would pay the top rate (in all cases except for AZ, nearly all of their taxpayers pay the rate in the top bracket). What all of this means is that we need to compare “effective tax rates” in these states with the effective rate that would result from our option of a 6.1% top rate. Another way to do the comparison would be to compare the per capita income tax burden among these states. Due to the lag in reporting, we would need to simulate our proposal for 2008 to do that. My gut tells me that once these comparisons are done, we will compare favorably to the other states except for WY on the income tax.

On the sales tax rate, at 2.9% we have the lowest state rate by far of the 8 other states levying a sales tax (MT has no sales tax). Of our neighbors, WY has the lowest rate at 4%. The rest of the intermountain west is between 4.75% (UT) and 6.5% (NV). Our proposed base would most likely be more broad than many of these states, but again, due to our low rate, the per capita burden would unquestionably be competetive.

On the property tax, the per capita burdens would be favorable over all. The distortion in our tax system between residential and non residential property, and our business personal property tax already make Colorado less competetive to certain kinds of businesses. At the end of our summary we noted some areas that need to be studied in depth. The property tax is one of them. It is a real mess. In the end, the impact of a uniform levy for schools depends on what your business is and where you are within the state.

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But Republicans and some centrist Democrats are also in agreement: Rising taxes gives families less money to spend, and that means a slower recovery. “I think given the fragility of the recovery, the timing is wrong for any kind of tax increase of this nature,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) told The Wall Street Journal. “I know that puts me out of step with many in my own caucus, but it’s important for members to remember the top 5 percent [of earners] generates 30 percent of consumer spending.”

Importantly, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, has said he does not support tax increases on any workers, yet. “As a general rule, you don’t want to be cutting spending or raising taxes in the midst of a downturn,” he says. “At the same time, we know that very soon we’ve got to pivot and focus on the deficit,” he said. “But it probably is too soon to cut spending or raise taxes.”

To get a bill over the Senate’s 60-vote cloture hurdle, therefore, Democrats might extend the totality of the cuts for two years, and include a long-term plan to raise taxes on wealthy Americans, perhaps followed by other income bands far down the road. The Bush tax cuts cost the government over $1 trillion in revenue. And economists argue that tax cuts have a wan stimulative effect in comparison with expanding the unemployment insurance system or programs like the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps.

Obama has vowed to retain cuts for the middle-class — meaning individuals making less than $200,000 a year and families making less than $250,000. And Congress is now formally debating which cuts to allow to expire, given concern over the nation’s large annual deficit and massive national debt, and which cuts to keep.

Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee started hearings on the matter, now the subject of serious debate among Democrats. The House is considering extending the middle-class cuts for a year before phase-out, and continuing the patch on the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) for two years. The Senate is considering similar provisions.

At the Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said, “The big questions before us now are whether we should make some of these tax cuts permanent. And if so, which ones? But that’s not the only challenge. There’s another elephant in the room — the budget deficit. And, that elephant is growing. Last year, the budget deficit was the largest share of the economy since World War II.” He told lawmakers to note that “with today’s budget picture, it’s no longer clear that we can afford large tax cuts for the most well-to-do.”

Only around five million tax filers, out of more than 140 million working Americans, make enough to be hit by possible tax increases for next year.

I think we should pay for this war, but we should pay for it after the unemployment rate is down below 5 percent. We should adopt the statutes now so that these taxes become operative then. But you’ve got to have a good fiscal policy as well as a good policy to fight the global war on terror.

If that figure sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) yesterday set the same conditional jobless threshold for any tax hikes.

There’s a key distinction to be made here: Cantor, as Dave pointed out yesterday, doesn’t support tax hikes in any context, making his call for the 5 percent threshold that much more disingenuous. Sherman, on the other hand, does support the war surtax, just not in the middle of an employment crisis.

Of course, with the jobless rate currently at 10.2 percent (and rising), it will likely be years before the 5 percent figure is realized.

The only people we’re asking to sacrifice in this war effort have been the men and women who serve our armed services and do so valiantly. They deserve the same kind of commitment here at home from citizens.

The Democrats’ plan, sponsored by House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.), would apply a 1 percent tax to most Americans. At the discretion of the White House, those earning more than $150,000 per year could be taxed at a higher rate. Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would be exempt, as would those who have lost family members in either conflict.

Larson says the bill would reverse the current congressional trend of heaping the financial burdens of Congress’s unfunded initiatives on future generations.

“We didn’t pay for the Bush tax cuts,” Larson said. “We didn’t pay for this war. We didn’t pay for the bailout of Wall Street and look at the problems that we found ourselves in.”

He forgot to mention that, just a few weeks ago, the Democrats passed a $210 billion proposal to hike Medicare payments to doctors — a bill that is unfunded.

That strategy, the Democrats wrote in a July 16 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), would have a negative impact on small businesses.

We believe that any revenues for the health care program should be collected from a larger base than the critical small business sector. We encourage you to seek creative ways to reduce the overall need for revenue generation, and to propose a more equitable way of distributing the burden of any remaining needs to ensure that health care reform is a success for small business, our economy, and the millions of uninsured who stand to benefit.

This is no real surprise. The freshman class of Democrats comes largely from conservative-leaning districts where any tax hike — even if it would affect only the wealthiest 1.2 percent of households — is anathema.

As Speaker, Pelosi has repeatedly allowed the members of her flock to cater to their constituents’ ideologies even when those sentiments have bucked the leadership’s priorities — a savvy political strategy aimed always at preserving seats in the next election. And these 22 Democrats are clearly banking on that trend to continue. Still, there aren’t too many funding options available to pay the $1.2 trillion cost of the Democrats’ health care proposal. If the choice falls between providing universal coverage and taxing the wealthiest Americans, well, Pelosi will likely start pushing back on this one.

At certain levels. President Bush’s — it’s a carryover, actually, from President Bush where he suggested that people who — companies that provide more than $11,500 worth of health insurance, that to the extent it exceeds that number. So it’s a very rich plan that the rich — that the high-end people end up paying, that that be included in income.

And that’s reasonable, in my opinion. I mean, reasonable health insurance prices should be excluded from income, but when you get into high — high-end plans, why should everybody be paying for those?

It’s unclear, at this early stage in the year’s health reform debate, how many of Gregg’s GOP colleagues agree.