How High Will Lake’s Income Tax Be: 1%, 4.5% or More?

Filed Under COIT, Income Tax, Lake County, property tax crisis

The one percent Lake County income tax is just a start on the road to more and more tax increases.

The Northwest Indiana Times reports that Lake County, Indiana residents could feel more tax pain — including the need for a 4.5 percent Lake County income tax — if government spending isn’t cut back.

Writes Patrick Guinane in the Northwest Indiana Times:

How does a 4.5 percent Lake County income tax sound?

That’s what it would take to offset the $367 million in combined annual revenue losses local government in Lake County would suffer under the constitutional tax caps proposed by Gov. Mitch Daniels. The other option, which drew dire predictions from local officials, would be to cut spending a whopping 26 percent.

‘We can close the jails down and take the law enforcement off the streets no problem,” Lake County Councilman, R-Blanchard, said in stunned sarcasm. “If (the cuts) do come, the state should have a plan in place to take over.”

There is one solution that the pols aren’t thinking about — cut back on wasteful spending and the government corruption that costs millions of dollars of taxpayers’ hard earned money. That means no more sidewalks for votes, “finders fees,” or county cars for kids!

Tax payers also have their own solution, as seen by the influx of Illinois residents into Indiana. They can move to areas where there is less corruption and waste fueling the need for massive tax increases to continually feed the insatiable beast that runs the political machinery. Jasper County is a short ride down I-65 and Porter County isn’t that far away either. Of course, that assumes that there are new people willing to move into Lake County.

Why not make Lake County attractive to business by ending corruption and letting a rising economy increase revenue without the need to confiscate more money from taxpayers who are already angry over the current tax situation.

It’s sad to write, but I predict that we’ll end up with higher and higher taxes because Lake County’s government will never act to cut back expenses, end waste, or stop corruption — especially when its officials are elected for life-long tenures or until ~~convicted~~ actually yanked out of their office by prison officers taking them to the correctional institution.

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