Collecting More Taxes From Fewer People

Despite Michigan's numerous shortcomings, one area where we excel is tax collections. In fact, over the past two years Michigan's tax revenue per job increased 3.5 percent while the national average fell 1.5 percent.

While legislators claim Michigan's tax structure is outdated and clamor for ways to extract more money from a shrinking population base of producers, the ongoing overspending crisis created by Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the Legislature is not evidence of too little revenue funneling into state coffers.

Fiscal Policy Analyst James Hohman explains it in this Detroit Free Press Op-Ed from Sunday and in this blog post from a month ago.

Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited.