NEWS BRIEFS: Eroding tax base, voting machines, education, much more

The Statehouse Report covers a presentation from PPI on tax reform.

By Lindsay Street, Statehouse correspondent  |  South Carolina’s population is growing and aging faster than the rest of the nation — and that means a further erosion of the income tax base.  Why? More retirees who pay a lower amount of income taxes. That was part of the message given to the Senate Finance Taxation System Review and Reform subcommittee Wednesday in a presentation from the Palmetto Promise Institute and economist Rebecca Gunnlaugsson.

Gunnlaugsson said the fairness of the state’s income tax and sales tax are issues that need to be tackled and can be tackled quickly.

“The number of people who pay income tax has been declining,” she said. She added that only 35 percent of sales are taxable in the state, a number that continues to decline. “As the tax base erodes, what we end up with is higher tax rates.”

Comprehensive tax reform has been listed as one of the priorities for this new session, and it is one of this publication’s Palmetto Priorities,