Detroit News Editorial Hits a Home Run on What Needs to be Done

Howes: What's it gonna take for Michigan to change? This Detroit News.com editorial is great.

However, many people talk about the need to reform our tax structure, to have a tax system that better reflects our evolution to a service society, to reform the Michigan Business Tax and its hated 22% surtax, to make the state more business friendly, and to improve the business climate to create jobs.

An out of the box solution that few have yet given great thought about that does all of those things is the proposed Michigan Fair Tax. For details go to http://mifairtax.org/, but, in short, it eliminates the current sales tax, personal income tax, Michigan Business Tax, Personal Property Tax, 6 mill State Education Tax on business and sales tax on all business purchases and replace them all with a simple retail sales tax, which at 9.75% is estimated to be revenue neutral.

I don’t know that the current proposal is perfect, but it sure warrants discussion and evaluation. My bet is, if that were done, people would see that this is far better than what we have, and much more likely to spur job growth in the state.

Now this is not the only thing that needs to be done, as the suggestions in the article regarding the public service unions are also needed. We need to get beyond the entitlement mentality that is crippling Michigan and encourage entrepreneurship, innovation, deferred gratification and hard work.

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