Tom Horner: Tea Party failure

The Star Tribune reports the details of Tom Horner’s tax and budget plans. The Tea Party reacts.

That’s right, friends. Tom Horner does want to tax your underwear, and your baseball cap, too!

Let’s assume for a moment that our avatars for the Tea Party knock down $150K in taxable income, and they spend $1,000 on clothing to maintain themselves in sartorial splendor. Under whose plan would their taxes go up the most: Dayton’s or Horner’s?

For a couple filing jointly, Dayton has proposed a new marginal tax rate that begins at a a taxable income of $150,000. So there would be no new taxes, or “no nude axes,” as someone trying to lip read George Bush Sr. might conclude, for these Tea Partiers under a Dayton plan. (The same is also true, obviously, if they only managed to make $145,000 taxable.)

Tom Horner would tax these two an additional $65 on their $1,000 in purchases of underwear, outerwear, shoes, hats, and accessories.

This is simple and generalized example, but it does show who wants whom to bear the cost of the additional tax revenue we need to raise.