Reality and Taxes

Facts are stubborn things when it comes to taxation, but not to Virginia's House Republicans.

L.SCOTT Lingamfelter, a Republican from Prince William County in Virginia's House of Delegates, would prefer to sacrifice a possible $1.5 billion in federal matching funds for Metro rather than compromise what he ringingly calls "our principles." By that, he and other Republicans in the legislature mean that they will oppose any new taxation, even to improve the state's jampacked roads or expand its mass transit system, because Virginians are already overtaxed. It's a fine argument. If only it were true.

There are various ways to compute relative tax burdens. But in the jumble of statistics, there is a common thread: Virginia is nowhere close to being a high-tax state.

That's true whether you refer to figures favored by the right-leaning Tax Foundation, the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, or the down-the-middle Federation of Tax Administrators. It's true whether you refer to tables published by the Retirement Living Information Center or the Military Officers Association of America. It's true for practically everyone, and it's true practically everywhere -- except for Mr. Lingamfelter and his fact-averse Republican colleagues in the House.

Here's a sampling of where Virginia's state and local taxes stack up against other states':

According to 2002 tax data supplied by the Census Bureau (the most recent available), Virginia had the nation's 41st-highest tax burden, measured as a percentage of personal income. Ranked on a per capita basis, it was 19th among the states. By another measure, overall state and local tax burden (combining percentage of income and per capita calculations), Virginia ranked 34th for 2005, according to figures from the Tax Foundation.

Mr. Lingamfelter and his colleagues are allergic to a fact-based analysis of tax burdens because the facts are not on their side. That is ridiculous enough when downstate lawmakers mouth this nonsense, heedless as they are of Northern Virginia's nightmarish traffic. It is galling coming from Mr. Lingamfelter, whose own constituents would be among the main beneficiaries of a revenue shot in the arm for the region's roads and rails.