The state sales tax is the one thing that we all have in common, neither blue nor red, it is all of us. The income tax was designed to divide us into separate classes of citizenry, and thereby conquer us piecemeal. It makes lawyers and financiers rich because they are the ones who can manipulate a law that takes thousands of pages to set out all the details. This way they have to annoy ALL the voters at the same time when they go to raise the sales tax, and it doesn't get any politically hotter than that.
The worst thing is to declare that sales tax is unfair to the poor, and those who say that would be the Democrats trying to curry favor with their preferred constituents. Not that they ever asked the minimum wage earner if he wants to have his boss suck a pile of cash out of his check every week then be given a window of time to demand part of it back every year. Instead of paying the state for all that they do with a dime every time he spends a dollar on a taxable item. Considering the low wage earner spends a greater percentage of pay on non-taxed items like rent and food, it seems easier and fairer to just pay at point of sale and be done with it.
Has anyone asked the retailers who collect the sale tax which would be easier to A) track sales tax collected or to B) take income tax out of their employee's checks? Employee checks are way more likely to get messed up and take brain hours to correct than a simple cash register program that gives the amount daily to be sent to the state.