Tuppence here, a death tax there

Since taking office in 2003, Governor Granholm has cut nearly $3 billion in state spending to resolve more than $4 billion in budget shortfalls – more than any other governor in the state’s history. To balance the fiscal year 2007 and 2008 budgets, the governor has closed an additional $2 billion funding gap. She once again balanced the budget using a responsible mix of spending cuts, tax restructuring, and government reform.

Comerica Inc. was founded in 1849 in Detroit and the Detroit Tigers play in Comerica Park, but this week the bank holding company announced it is moving its headquarters to Dallas–where, it said, the bigger growth opportunities are. Consider it one more vote of confidence in the state the national expansion forgot, and especially in Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm’s economic agenda.

Re-elected last year, Ms. Granholm recently rewarded the voters by announcing some $1 billion in new fees and tax increases. The plan would charge Michigan residents higher levies for almost every activity inside the state with a moving part. She would tax trucking, shopping, smoking, hunting, fishing, drinking beer and liquor, using a cell phone and, yes, even dying.

Her plan does complete the phase-out of the state’s hated “single business tax,” which the Tax Foundation has called one of the most anti-growth business taxes in the nation. She should have stopped right there. Instead the Governor wants to create a new corporate income tax as well as a new 2% excise tax on upwards of 100 business services. The net effect would be to raise Michigan’s overall business tax burden. She’d also impose a 5% death tax on estates valued at more than $2 million–which is a sure way to encourage even more Michigan retirees to relocate to Florida.