GalesburgPlanet.com

In a span of less than two weeks, commis­sions in two very different states – Mass­a­chu­setts and Oklahoma – have issued remarkably similar recom­men­da­tions on how to deal with the slews of special tax breaks that evade scrutiny and account­ability year after year, budget after budget. As CTJ has pointed out, state budget processes are essen­tially rigged in favor of tax breaks (loop­holes, subsidies) and as a result it’s become far too easy for lawmakers to enact (and extend) tax give­aways for virtually any purpose imaginable.

In Mass­a­chu­setts, the Tax Expen­diture Commission just released eight recom­men­da­tions designed to deal with this very problem. According to the Commission, lawmakers should clearly specify the purpose of all tax breaks (or “ tax expen­di­tures”) so that analysts can begin eval­u­ating their effec­tiveness on an ongoing basis and providing real­istic policy recom­men­da­tions to lawmakers. The Commission further urged that those eval­u­a­tions be care­fully timed to coincide with the state’s normal budget process, and even suggested that some tax expen­di­tures be scheduled to sunset (or expire) so that lawmakers are forced to debate those breaks after the eval­u­a­tions are complete and the facts are out.

In Oklahoma, the Incentive Review Committee recently released its set of recom­men­da­tions dealing with one category of tax expen­di­tures in particular: those osten­sibly aimed at spurring economic devel­opment. As in Mass­a­chu­setts, the Oklahoma Committee said that lawmakers need to more clearly artic­ulate the purpose of tax breaks, and that eval­u­a­tions of those breaks should be done in a rigorous and ongoing fashion. One of the Oklahoma Committee’s more important recom­men­da­tions might sound obvious at first, but it’s actually often over­looked: good eval­u­a­tions take time and resources, and the state should adequately fund whichever department is charged with completing the evaluations.

Jon Stewart hilar­i­ously skewered the phrase “spending reduc­tions in the tax code” as another way of saying taxes need to be raised. These tax commis­sions (as well those in Minnesota, Missouri, and Virginia), tasked with real­is­ti­cally assessing state budgets, are forcing Amer­icans to recognize that spending through the tax code exists and that it requires the same level of scrutiny as spending through government programs, as previ­ously outlined by CTJ.