By GARRY RAYNO, Distant Dome

In New Hampshire, the third rail of politics — thanks to people like William Loeb and Meldrim Thomson and now the Americans for Prosperity — is the word tax.

Whether the word is used next to other words like income, sales, paint or almost anything but property, does not matter as long as it results in demonization and ridicule in the eyes of the public.

It was not always so.

Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” was one of acceptance of what is unavoidable.

When you are 18 years old you may not believe death is inevitable, but by the time you reach 65 years old you know it is.

And while some would have you believe “taxation is theft,” pushed by an organization funded by billionaires, taxes are as old as the granite hills and most people believe they are inevitable even if they are not crazy about paying them.

If there were no taxes, there would be no roads, no police or firefighters, no municipal water or sewer, no electricity, no phones, no hospitals, no prisons, no airports, no parks, no help for the poor, no child care, no public education and no weather reports.

There are some in the New Hampshire legislature who believe that would be fine, but the vast majority of people in the state would not.

New Hampshire has long had a taxation system that sought to have people from “not here” pay a good portion of its taxes, the “don’t tax me, tax the guy behind the tree” narrative.

For years the state’s sin taxes on tobacco, rooms and meals, beer, and its monopoly on hard liquor and wine, not to mention gambling filled the state’s coffers.

But times change and people experience the health impacts of smoking and drinking too much alcohol, and now those taxes are a much smaller section of the revenue landscape now dominated by property taxes and business taxes, that provide the foundational fuel for governmental ignition.

A little more than a decade ago, Republicans began the process of reducing the rates of the state’s two business taxes, the business profits tax, which largely falls on multinational conglomerates, and the business enterprise tax, a value added tax intended to end a lawsuit over the fairness of the business profits tax brought by — at-the-time — the state’s largest manufacturer, Cabletron Systems, whose owners questioned why large law firms, physicians groups and engineering firms etc. did not pay the tax, but they did.

Since that time the rates have been reduced gradually and the state has lost an estimated more than $1 billion in revenue had it been collected.

Republicans argued the rate cuts would spur economic activity and the cuts would be a wash, but a study by the NH Fiscal Policy Institute indicated that was just not true, that in fact the state lagged behind other states in revenue growth in the region and nationally. The spurring-the-economy theory is equal to the trickle down myth. They are in reality the same argument.

And then two years ago, Republican lawmakers ended the interest and dividends tax because they wanted to ensure the state did not have an income tax, which the interest and dividends tax was.

It was also the only levy that actually taxes wealth in the state.

What hasn’t been reduced over the years are property taxes which continue to increase both because of the skyrocketing housing prices and the state legislature’s shrewd ability to transfer its obligations down to the local level and property taxes.

This dichotomy between the wealthy and elites and the common man has been a constant battle since the country was founded when the elite founders of the country sought in many ways to limit the public’s access to public money.

Venessa Williamson, a  senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, in her book “The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History”, agues that Americans normally do not hold extreme anti-tax views.

“People largely see taxation as a civic duty. Being a taxpayer is an indication of citizenship. Taxation becomes controversial only when who counts as a citizen becomes controversial,” she writes.

She argues in her book that the Boston Tea Party was not anti-tax, but in opposition to the tax cut the East India Company received from the King of England and who was collecting the tax.

Williamson argues the disagreements over taxation are really about the scope and nature of democracy.

Since the country’s beginning, opposition to taxation has repeatedly come from rich white elitists and not the general public, she claims, and are essentially fights over who may hold power.

Politics like those expressed by the GOP today against all new or increased taxes is really opposition to government itself, Williamson writes.

The argument against the general public controlling the purse strings through taxation is not new and was at the center of what libertarian economist James Buchanan advocated in his work with libertarians like the Koch brothers.

The general public could not be trusted with power because they would use it for their self-interest while expecting the wealthy to pay for it.

The wealthy once paid significantly more in taxes than they do now.

When Ronald Reagan entered office the highest tax bracket was 70 percent on unearned or investment income, but was lowered to 28 percent before he left office shifting the tax burden to those individuals and corporations not in the top brackets.

New Hampshire has no income tax and that is why many companies make it their headquarters although most of their operations are located elsewhere. The New Hampshire headquarter’s only purpose is to protect the corporate officers’ salaries from taxation.

If you view paying taxes as indicative of being a citizen of the state, then you have a stake in the state, and successes and its people.

But in New Hampshire, most state taxes are voluntary. No one is forcing you to buy tobacco, or liquor, or insurance, or sweepstakes tickets, or to sell your property.

If you agree utilities — electricity and phone service — are a necessity, the taxes on those bills may be the only ones that are not voluntary.

But if you agree with Williamson that taxation is really about “who is a citizen,” then the words you put next to the word tax are irrelevant.

The infamous pledge is not really about any broad-based tax, but about not expanding democracy to those who may not be lucky or wealthy enough to afford avoiding taxes.

The results of this system are more noticeable every day, with the restructuring of once proud Keene State College, the state’s mental health and developmentally disabled systems failing to meet needs, asking Medicaid parents pay more for their children’s health care costs, and ending scholarship payback programs that put medical providers in the state’s rural areas.

The state’s budget writers have nearly ended any state support for the arts, and some wanted to close the state library. 

Those decisions were not made by the people of the state, but by politicians who can afford to spend six months a year in Concord for $100 a year plus mileage.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.