Robert L. Mitten: Tax ‘cow is brown’

I have been retired for over 10 years. One thing I remember from my working career is the statement that a good friend and colleague would make while we were dealing with a particularly messy problem. He would say: “It’s time to call the cow brown.” What he meant by this was that it was time to state the obvious.

Tax time is over, and it is now time to state the obvious. Our much ballyhooed tax decrease is really a tax shift.

For me, it worked in this manner. My total taxable income went up by less than 1 percent. I have a part-time job. My state taxable income went up by 15 percent because I no longer have certain deductions. Although my state taxable percentage went down because of the increase in taxable income, my tax liability went up.

I also read in the April 16 news article “Survey: Most believe state taxes went up” that some legislators say that the single biggest savings comes from allowing a temporary 1-cent sales tax to expire in 2011, but that was made up by broadening the base and the 4-cent increase to the sales tax on our electric bills in July 2014.

State Sen. Phil Berger said that “you cannot spin the math ... and that North Carolina families in every income category have seen their taxes go down.”

I think that it’s time to call the cow brown.

This story was originally published April 18, 2015 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Robert L. Mitten: Tax ‘cow is brown’."