Letter: Taxes impede business growth

Friday, July 25, 2003 | 5:02 a.m.

I read Jeff German's column in Wednesday's Las Vegas Sun. It appears he has no experience dealing with fiduciary responsibilities of owners, fellow workers or stockholders. If he had, he would not be in favor of a gross receipts tax on business. Does he not realize that business taxes smother business growth and reduces a company's ability to give its employees better benefits?

Taxation on businesses raises the cost of products and services. Surely he does not believe that this tax would be absorbed by business, one way or the other. Eventually John Q. Public pays for it. In reality it becomes a taxation on the consumer.

German should know that in business, no solid budget is ever committed to beyond two years. The Legislature did exactly what it should have done for a two-year time frame. It will meet again in two years and deal with the issues then at hand. The tax-and-spend advocates are preaching doom and gloom as to what is going to happen if the economy goes bad. The state should be prepared to do what businesses do -- cut expenses, curtail activities, reduce benefits and balance the spending against income.

No business properly run has the ability or desire to predict future negatives or fund a "down side" in advance. It is time we ran this state and its budget in a manner that is responsible to the citizens and according to the state constitution, and not to liberal giveaway programs.

DEAN PARKER