Thursday letters: Don’t shift tax burden to poor

When the income tax was begun in 1929, it was to be a benevolent tax, with the rich paying much more than the poor. Then in the 1950s, South Carolina instituted a sales tax, which was levied on everyone equally according to what they consumed. The sales tax has increased considerably over the years.

Now there is a concerted effort to decrease the percentage of taxes that the wealthy pay by increasing the portion that the poor pay by increasing the gasoline tax and decreasing the income tax. U.S. Rep. Tom Rice is touting this approach on the federal level, and Gov. Nikki Haley is touting it on the state level.

We need to improve our roads. We need to increase taxes. If we increase the state gasoline tax by half of what lawmakers suggest (seven cents per gallon) and leave the income tax as is, that should be sufficient.

It is not a time to lower income taxes so that the rich will have to pay less of the burden. It is time for the poor to learn that the income taxes relieve them of higher sales taxes that show no mercy.