I was looking at the Examiner’s list of new bills introduced on the first day of this year’s legislative session, and a couple of them are goofy, some are not so great, and some are good ideas. One of the good ones in my humble opinion is House Bill 1087 which would eliminate the mandatory withholding of state income taxes. Strangely enough, our Transparency Czarina Amy Oliver discussed this very bill with Mike Krause on iVoices.org.

Aside from the obvious arguments relating to every working citizen in Colorado giving an interest free loan to the government, whether they like it or not, due to mandatory withholding, there is another argument to be made about leaving withholding up to the employee: IMAGINE WRITING THAT CHECK! I wonder how much outrage and hostility your average voter would have if they had to write a check to the government each year. Would that sort of income tax transparency be enough to cause an overall shift in demand for lower taxes and less spending?

Senior fellow at Independence and the Cato Institute, Randal O’Toole, hit the big time the other day when he found his way onto the new John Stossel show on Fox Business Channel. He did a great job summarizing some major points against building infrastructure for rail, rather than more efficient and less costly means of transportation like buses. If you happen to be a “read” rather than “watch” kinda guy, then take a gander at Randal’s arsenal against light-rail here.

If only the Beatles were around to add a couple more lines to the song “Taxman” to describe this situation. One of the unfortunate byproducts of TABOR is the increased use of “fees” by government. One of these new taxes fees is the tire disposal fee of $1.50 on each old tire Colorado consumers want to dispose of (usually charged to consumers buying new tires). Now here’s the genius: the fee is assessed BEFORE the subtotal making it subject to sales tax! What better way to raise some extra money than to tax a tax?!

Our investigative reporter Todd Shepherd uncovered this incredible scam with his new report, “Government doesn’t just levy fees, it taxes them too.” The story is already making the rounds as evidenced by this National Review Online coverage here. Like I told Todd, $300K might not be a scandal to some people, but if we don’t stop this from happening now, it won’t be long before we start paying taxes on all our newly minted fees.