Perhaps you will find it of small comfort Monday, especially if you’re straining to file taxes online or standing at the Post Office, but even 100 years ago newspapers were filled with stories about the income tax.
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Perhaps misery loves company, even if that company is found on only a genealogy chart.
Among the biggest issues debated back then, in addition to all the many vagaries about what actually constituted income, was whether everyone’s return should be considered a public record.

When you’re a transit commuter, as I am (serendipity placed the red line in my neighborhood a few years ago), the daily land war along Wasatch Front freeways can be a jolt. By necessity, I was forced to make the journey downtown behind the wheel one day last week, vying with others to establish a beachhead in the lane of my choice along the way.

Most of the time, my lane choices proved incorrect, as I quickly discovered while traffic in the lane I abandoned sped past. Still, traffic here is a relative 

If downtown Salt Lake City were a garden, a convention hotel would be the tree that just won’t take root, no matter what the gardener does.

The latest effort to use just the right amount of compost (I’ll refrain from comparing tax incentives to dung) failed last week when Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams decided to walk away from nine-months of negotiations with Omni Hotels and declare the process to be back at the proverbial drawing board.

When a news story confirms our worst fears about how the worship of college sports has our priorities in a knot, it’s hardly time to stop the presses. This isn’t “man bites dog.” It’s more like the umpteenth chapter in a long book whose plot never seems to resolve itself.

Call me Ishmael … as in, perhaps, Kemal Ishmael, former defensive back at Central Florida (and now in the NFL), not the guy narrating Moby Dick.

Few politicians win by promising higher taxes. Walter Mondale proved that so eloquently in 1984.

So it was a little counter-intuitive to see so many mayors along the Wasatch Front lobby their county leaders this week to raise the sales tax. Lobby may not be the word.  They were practically begging.

Kids don’t volunteer to be grounded, just as adults don’t ask to be audited. Just what is going on here?

Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz says he wants to move beyond the “bumper sticker” slogans that are lobbed against his bill allowing states to collect sales taxes off everything their residents buy online.

But along the way he throws out an argument of his own that, while perhaps a bit large for a bumper sticker, is nevertheless far more complicated than he makes it seem. It goes like this: People today walk into a retail establishment, test a product,  then whip out their smart phones and order it online so they won’t have to pay sales tax, which is unfair to the retailer.


Chaffetz, who visited the combined editorial boards of the Deseret News and KSL recently, is carrying on a fight that has raged for at least two decades. At its heart, it concerns how you have learned to shop online and how much you’re going to pay.

It is a fight in which Utah long has been at the forefront. 

Politicians often act as if there are several sets of taxpayers — one each for local, school, state and federal budgets. You know better, of course, because you get bills for all of the above.

And when more than one government gets the same idea — raising gas taxes, for instance, or adding to the sales tax — your wallet can begin to feel like one of those footballs New England quarterback Tom Brady likes to use. Except that it doesn’t help you get a grip.

Are you ready to open wide and swallow a tax increase? After all, it will be good for you. At least that’s what we’re being told.

Utah, according to the experts, faces an $11.3 billion transportation shortfall between now and 2040, and we had better start paying now.

But don’t close your mouth and walk away yet. Once you’ve swallowed a Utah gas tax increase, you may have to fill your spoon with a federal one, as well.

As a Wall Street Journal editorial put it recently, falling gas prices “are the first lucky break for U.S. 

Deadlines force me to write this before the State of the Union address, but the expectation is that much of what President Obama says will have all the practical effect of a promise from a department store Santa Claus. Nothing actually will happen unless somebody else acts.

It may be a ridiculous stretch to equate Congress with levelheaded and wise parents, but thanks to the sheer force of political opposition, elected representatives, in this case, will be good enough to bar the door to more expensive programs.

But in the case of the president’s hope of providing “free” tuition for earnestly striving students at community colleges, it’s important to note that such initiatives are best left to states. Otherwise, all sorts of complications can arise.

Utah provides a couple of examples.

During a combined KSL-Deseret News editorial board meeting last week, I asked Utah Valley