West, Texas continues to be rocked by the aftermath of the fertilizer plant explosion last month. Victims are now discovering they may still have to pay property taxes on their destroyed homes. While these homeowners can file protests until the end of May, the law requires property values to be determined on January 1 of the tax year. Local governments are allowed to reappraise homes after natural disasters, but the fertilizer plant explosion was very much a man-made calamity.

Even the mayor, Tommy Muska, has filed to protest the property value of his home, which is so badly damaged from the blast that it may cost $300,000 to repair. However, the mayor noted, granting victims relief is a “double-edged sword,” as the town will flounder from the millions of lost tax dollars. The magnitude of the explosion, which claimed 15 lives and injured 160 others, also devastated a huge chunk of West’s much-needed revenue for many years to come:

Hahn estimated that West lost at least $29 million in taxable value as a result of the blast, not counting damage to nontaxable property such as schools, water tanks and infrastructure.

That amount represents more than one-fifth of West’s tax base of $140.4 million, according to preliminary values. Hahn said losing that much revenue this year would hobble the finances of the city and West Independent School District when they need the money the most.

Whatever the appraisal district decides, either the victims or the town will take a debilitating hit. Victims cannot count on West Fertilizer Co. for compensation, either. The plant was only insured for $1 million of damages, a negligible sum that does not even begin to cover the actual losses. Property damage alone is projected to reach $100 million. Even so, the company was not required to carry any liability insurance at all. Many states, including Texas, do not impose any legal requirements for companies to have liability insurance. This latest revelation is just one of the myriad regulatory failures that led to the deadly explosion.

On Friday, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers launched a criminal investigation into the explosion. Some victims are also pursuing civil lawsuits against the company.

The United States Senate voted Monday evening to pass the Marketplace Fairness Act, bipartisan legislation that would close what is known as the “Amazon loophole” by giving states the authority to collect sales taxes on online purchases even when internet retailers aren’t based within their borders. That loophole gives online sellers an advantage over brick-and-mortar retailers that have to collect sales taxes on most purchases.

The legislation passed 69-27.

The new rules would apply to all retailers with sales exceeding $1 million a year should it pass the House of Representatives, where it is expected to face opposition. Amazon, the largest online retailer, now supports it, but eBay and other online outlets are opposed. eBay sent 40 million emails to its users in April protesting the legislation.

“The contentious debate in the Senate shows that a lot more work needs to be done to get the Internet sales tax issue right, including ensuring that small businesses using the Internet are protected from new burdens that harm their ability to compete and grow,” Brian Bieron, eBay’s Senior Director of Global Public Policy, said in a statement. “eBay will continue to focus on bringing greater balance to the legislation by protecting small businesses with less than $10 million in sales or fewer than 50 employees.”

Despite those concerns, the closure of the loophole will have big benefits for states and taxpayers. States have lost billions of dollars to the loophole at a time when tight budgets have forced them to cut back on education and other programs. Low-income taxpayers, meanwhile, will benefit because closing the loophole will make state sales taxes slightly less regressive. However, raising the exemption, as eBay wants to do, would significantly reduce those benefits, which have been sought by governors, including Republicans, across the country in recent years.

The Senate moved a step closer to giving states the authority to collect sales taxes on online purchases Monday, voting 74-20 to begin debate on the Marketplace Fairness Act. The bill, which would close the so-called “Amazon Loophole” that allows online retailers to avoid collecting sales taxes from purchasers in states where they do not have a physical presence, has broad bipartisan support among both conservatives and liberals, and the voting margin nearly mirrored a symbolic resolution on the measure earlier this year.

But even though Amazon, long the beneficiary of the loophole, now supports the legislation for its own reasons, other online retailers are mobilizing against it. eBay, the online auction and retail site, sent emails to 40 million of its users over the weekend, urging them to voice opposition to the bill, as Reuters reports:

The e-commerce giant plans to send emails from Donahoe to at least 40 million eBay users, including most sellers on the marketplace. The first messages were sent out Sunday morning.

In the emails, [eBay CEO John] Donahoe said the legislation, known as the Marketplace Fairness Act, unfairly burdens small online merchants and asked eBay users to send an email message to members of Congress asking for changes.

The current legislation, introduced by Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi (R), exempts companies with less than $1 million in annual out-of-state sales, a threshold eBay says would hit many of its online merchants. It wants to expand the exemption to companies with less than $10 million in out-of-state sales.

Raising the exemption would largely defeat the purpose of the legislation, though. Because they don’t have to collect sales taxes in most states, online retailers have a built-in advantage over brick-and-mortar retailers that have no choice — and that advantage exists for no particular reason. And businesses that would be exceed the $1 million sales exemption, meanwhile, are hardly small-time retailers. Raising the exemption would also put a dent in the revenue generated by closing the loophole, estimated at as much as $11 billion for states that have faced crunched budgets in the aftermath of the Great Recession and have been forced to cut spending as a result. And while sales taxes are inherently regressive, the Marketplace Fairness Act would make the tax code slightly more progressive, since many low-income families don’t have the option to shop at online retailers that don’t currently levy sales taxes.

The Senate will likely vote this week on legislation that would close the “Amazon Loophole,” a tax loophole that allows online retailers like Amazon and eBay to avoid collecting sales taxes on most purchases made through the sites. The loophole gives online retailers a major advantage over their offline competitors, since they only have to collect sales taxes in states where they have a physical presence.

The Marketplace Fairness Act, which has bipartisan support in the Senate, would change that, giving states the authority to levy sales taxes on online purchases even when the retailer isn’t based within a state’s borders. Passing the legislation would both remove an unfair advantage for online retailers give cash-strapped states more authority to collect sales taxes. But despite warnings from conservatives that it would represent a “government takeover of the internet” and levy “taxation without representation,” the loophole also makes sales taxes even more regressive, since low-income families often don’t have access to online retailers:

Even apart from the Internet sales tax issue, poorer families pay a larger share of their income in sales taxes than better-off families do because they have to spend almost everything they earn. Tax-free Internet shopping compounds the problem: many low-income families would love to shop online to avoid sales tax but can’t because they don’t own a computer or can’t afford high-speed Internet access.

In addition to placing even more of the burden of sales taxes on low-income families, the inability to collect sales taxes from online retailers costs states billions of dollars, exacerbating the budget problems they have faced since the Great Recession. Those problems have led to substantial spending cuts, most of which are targeted at education, unemployment, transportation, and other programs that help low- and middle-income families, meaning the loss of revenue from the Amazon loophole (which Amazon now supports closing) gives an unnecessary advantage to some businesses while hurting the most vulnerable Americans in multiple ways.

In Washington, you tend to hear a lot about how great moderates are.  According to newspaper editorialists and other professional centrists, if only we listened more to moderates, we’d be able to find that comforting middle ground between that horrible, no-good class war politics of the left and the hardline conservative politics of the right.

Well, I’m all for listening more to moderates but I know something that most professional centrists don’t: The typical moderate is actually quite progressive — you might even call them a class warrior. Take these just-released data from Gallup.

One question asked whether distribution of wealth in the US is fair or whether it should be distributed more evenly.  By a very healthy 59-33 margin, the public thought wealth should be distributed more evenly.  But those sentiments are too wimpy for moderates who call for a more even distribution by a substantially wider 65-29 margin.

Another question asked whether government should redistribute wealth by “heavy taxes” on the rich.  The public endorsed the heavy taxes idea by 52-45, the highest level of support since the question was first asked in 1999.  But once again moderates are made of sterner stuff: they call for heavy taxes on the rich by a more robust 55-41 margin.

So the next time you catch someone yammering on about how moderates are alienated by class war politics, remind them of what moderates really think instead of what they think they think.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is reviving a once-failed income tax plan that will give a 10 percent tax cut to all of the state’s residents but will grant more of its benefits to the wealthiest New Jerseyans. Christie pitched a similar plan in 2012, but it failed at the hands of Democrats in the state senate when the state’s revenue levels fell far short of projections.

State revenues are healthier now, however, and Christie is using that to justify the plan’s revival, Bloomberg reports:

Homeowners earning $400,000 or less would get an income-tax credit equal to 10 percent of their property taxes, capped at $10,000 and phased in over four years. The governor made his proposal a condition of his increasing a separate tax credit for low and middle-income workers. [...]

“The big excuse for not doing this before was they weren’t sure if we had the revenue,” Christie said. “Four months in a row we’ve exceeded our projections on revenue, and the economy’s really starting to come back here in New Jersey.”

Revenues for the current year are less than one percent above projections, according to the state treasurer, after they rebounded at the end of 2012. But even if revenue levels are in a better position, Christie’s tax cut would still aim most of its benefits at the wealthy. While Christie touts the plan as giving an average tax cut of $775, the similar 2012 version would have given just $80 to a family making $50,000, roughly the median American income. The wealthiest 1 percent of New Jersey taxpayers, meanwhile, would receive 40 percent of the total tax cut, with millionaires saving roughly $7,200 a year.

New Jersey’s tax code is already skewed toward the wealthy, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which found that the bottom 20 percent of New Jersey taxpayers pay an average of 11.2 percent of their income in taxes. The top 1 percent, meanwhile, pay just 7 percent of their income in taxes each year.

With tax day now in the rear view mirror, it’s a good time to review what the public really thinks about taxes. Data collected over many years indicate that the public’s views are surprisingly nuanced and far from the blanket anti-tax stereotype promoted by conservatives. Here are the basic contours of the public’s views.

1. The public is closely divided on whether the amount of federal income tax they pay is too high or about right. Gallup has asked the same question since 1947: “Do you consider the amount of federal income tax you have to pay as too high, about right, or too low?”  In the latest survey (April, 2013), half said their taxes were too high, 45 percent said they were about right and 2 percent said they were too low.  In the previous year’s survey, there were actually slight more who said their taxes were about right (47 percent) than said their taxes were too high (46 percent). Concern about being overtaxed is clearly still an issue in American politics, but it’s hardly overwhelming.

2. Most Americans feel that the income tax they pay is fair. Although many people say their taxes are too high, majorities of Americans in Gallup polling since the late 1990s on generally say that their tax burden is fair.  In April, 2013, 55 percent said their amount of federal income tax they paid was fair, compared to 42 percent who thought it was unfair.

3. But most Americans believe that, overall, the tax system is unfair. Roper polling conducted from the 1970’s to the late 1990’s shows majorities of Americans over this entire period saying that the income tax system is somewhat or quite unfair for most people. Sixty-two percent of likely voters in a 2003 GQR poll said the federal tax system is not fair and only 32 percent said it is fair.  More recently, a 2011 Pew poll found 55 percent saying the federal tax system is not too fair or not fair at all compared to 43 percent who thought the system was moderately or very fair.

4. They believe it’s unfair primarily because the wealthy and corporations aren’t paying their fair share. Gallup polling from April 2013 shows an overwhelming majority of Americans (77 percent) saying lower income people pay either too much (40 percent) or their fair share (37 percent) of taxes.  Even more strongly, 95 percent say middle income people pay either too much (42 percent) or their fair share (53 percent) of taxes.  In contrast, 61 percent believe upper income people pay too little in taxes and 66 percent believe corporations pay too little.

5. As a consequence, there’s strong support for raising taxes on the rich. In recent years, the public has shown overwhelming support for eliminating the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250,000 a year.  Support has also been lop-sided for Buffet rule taxation (those making a million or more a year should pay at least 30 percent in taxes) and for taxing capital gains income the same as work income.

These data do not make the American taxpayer sound like the tax-hating rebel so dear to the hearts of conservatives like Grover Norquist.  In fact, that taxpayer sounds more like a latent class warrior.  That’s something for progressives to keep in mind moving forward.

Gallup is out with its fairly regular Tax Day polling showing that 50 percent of Americans believe the amount of federal income tax they have to pay is too high.   On its own, pollsters say, this figure doesn’t really tell us much.  Only by looking at data over time can we determine what this figure means.

Or can we?

In April 2012, near the end of President Obama’s “socialist” first term when the top marginal tax rate was 37.9 percent on regular income, 46 percent of Americans said their federal taxes were too high — tied for an all-time low.  Back in 1985, during the supply-side glory years of Ronald Reagan when the top marginal tax rate was 50 percent on regular income, 63 percent of Americans said their federal taxes were too high.  Five years later, in 1990, after even more tax cuts had pushed the top rate down to 33 percent, the percentage was exactly the same – 63 percent.  And way back in 1947, shortly after the (by today’s GOP standards) practically communist FDR/Truman years had jacked the top marginal tax rate to 86.5 percent on regular income above $200,000 per year, 54 percent of American taxpayers in a slightly different sample said their taxes were too high. This is almost precisely the same percentage of Americans (53 percent) who felt that way in 2007 after multiple rounds of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts:

Doing a rough calculation of the numbers provided in the most recent Gallup release, the average percentage of Americans across the 48 polls listed from 1947-2013 who say the amount of federal tax they pay is too high is 58 percent — or the exact percentage of Americans who felt that way in 1967 when the top income tax rate on regular income was a lofty 70 percent and in 1997 when it was 43.7 percent.

Apparently, there’s no rhyme-or-reason at all to Americans’ views about federal taxes as they relate to the actual top income tax rate.  Supply-siders everywhere don’t know whether to cry or rejoice.