To the editor:

Scott Drenkard is the director of state projects for the Tax Foundation, a conservative think tank on taxation issues. He addressed the Kansas House Committee on Taxation on March 15 (http://taxfoundation.org/article/kansas-pass-through-carve-out-national-perspective).

The Tax Foundation states a tax system should have a broad base, which allows for lower rates of taxation. But this is opposite to what Gov. Brownback has supported and enacted, with the support of the Kansas Legislature, for Kansans. As stated by Drenkard in his testimony to the committee, “while decreasing taxes is generally associated with greater economic growth, the pass-through carve-out is primarily incentivizing tax avoidance, not job creation.”

After this tax legislation was enacted in 2012, this new tax avoidance strategy quickly caught on.  The state of Kansas went from a possible 191,000 entities claiming the exception to 330,000 claimants, 70 percent more than anticipated. The governor and the Legislature have created a narrow, inequitable taxation system for our citizens. A system where 330,000 entities get a large tax break, where taxes are unequally shifted to others, consumption taxes, and where the state must every year play the “rob Peter to pay Paul” game to balance the budget.

All the while, our educational system — public schools and post secondary — dangles over the abyss. What is most distressing about this situation is the lack of courage and decency to admit an error was made, the system does not work and repeal this disastrous taxation policy.