While the Kansas City Star reports on some elected officials who want to keep the earnings tax in place so badly that they don’t even want people to vote on it, the sidebar tells a different story.
A poll asking “Would you sign a petition calling for a vote to repeal Kansas City’s earnings tax?” had clear cut results:
While online polls aren’t scientific, with 420 people responding, and 70% of them indicating that they would sign a ballot initiative that would trigger a vote on the earnings tax, it’s safe to infer that a lot of people want a chance to vote on the earnings tax in Kansas City.
The petitions would not eliminate the earnings tax. Instead, if petitioners collect roughly 95,000 valid signatures from at least six Missouri congressional districts, voters across the state would be asked to change the earnings tax law in November.
If those voters said yes, then voters in Kansas City and St. Louis would hold a referendum in 2011, and every five years after that, on keeping the levy. If local voters rejected the tax, it would phase out over 10 years and could not be reinstated.
So when elected officials, or anyone, argues against this ballot initiative, they are arguing against giving the taxpayers who pay this tax a chance to vote on it, either to affirm or phase out.
