One of the slogans used during our American Revolution was: “No taxation without representation.” King George III and his unelected governors could and did impose things like the Stamp Act and taxes on tea — which helped swing Americans to coffee. But maybe the inverse is also significant, and that is: “There is no representation without taxation.”
Here in Alaska, those who pay are well represented and they are the oil barons and the fish processors — the mines pay some corporate tax, but as far as I know, Alaska gets no royalties in either cash or kind. Well, maybe Alaska’s Fort Knox can be found just across the Knik Arm Bridge to Nowhere; its full of the Fort Knox Mine’s golden bars, Red Dog’s bars of zinc and lead, and Greens Creek’s silver.
Our revolution of 1776 was to give power to the citizens — then white men of property, but that has been modified in the course of our ongoing revolution. We were to be taxed by our elected representatives and we could vote them out or respect their ‘informed’ opinion about the needs of the nation or the state or the city. It’s one of a representatives’ primary jobs and should not be subverted by the general population votes nor tax caps.
Alaska desperately needs new tax revenue, a “fair share” of the oil bounty, a progressive state income tax — not tied to the bogus federal system that privileges the rich — plus appropriate royalties on hard rock minerals, fisheries and timber harvesting.
We should use the one general tax found in the U.S. Constitution, the head tax, a fixed tax of perhaps $100 per person per year for anybody in the state of Alaska for more than, say, three days. Everyone — oil workers, fishermen from Seattle, all the tourists, soldiers and their families (from just about everywhere) — really all men, women and children would get a beautiful photo ID, just to prove one paid their due for that year, but an official ID nonetheless. Alaskans who receive the Permanent Fund dividend can cover the $100 even as little children.
Property and sales taxes should remain as borough and city revenue sources exclusively.
— Thomas R. Wilson
Anchorage
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