OPINION:
While Republicans promote themselves as the party of no taxes, the Democrats try to sell themselves as the party of the helping hand. Both parties are thieves of hard-working taxpayers. Neither party has ever met a tax it didn’t love.
The Buck Act, for example, allows the Department of Defense to authorize state and local taxation powers to levy state sales and meal taxes on federal military property where private venues such as fast food businesses may operate. None of these state or local governments has a fiduciary responsibility for these federal military reservations, yet they are enriched through taxes they levy on the very people who fight our wars, as well as those people’s families and federal Defense Department workers and contractors. The folks they don’t mind taxing are people who have no say in that tax policy, as many of them are not residents of the state in which they are stationed.
Former Virginia Delegate Ron Villanueva proposed legislation a few years ago to repeal this tax in the commonwealth — and the subcommittee chair, a Republican, had the legislation tabled, effectively killing it. Why? Because the state’s municipalities that rely on this revenue stream could not afford to lose it. Republican and former Rep. Scott Taylor and Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine have refused to introduce federal legislation to repeal the Buck Act. Yet they’ll all tell us of the debt we owe our military men and women. If they truly believe this, they would have repealed the Buck Act years ago.
AL QUARTARARO
Virginia Beach, Va.
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