There will be no more important and overarching issue before the General Assembly this year than tax reform. Proposals being floated by legislative leaders would reduce or eliminate personal and corporate income taxes and replace lost revenues by increasing the sales tax, eliminating exemptions, and/or making further cuts in funding to crucial state programs. This would mean a decidedly regressive turn to the state’s tax structure and would bring hardship to vulnerable people.
We have a chance to hear from one of the nation’s experts in the field of faith and fair taxation. Susan Pace Hamill is a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law specializing in tax law. She also has a Masters in Theological Studies from the Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and is a United Methodist. She came to national prominence ten years ago when she published an article attacking Alabama’s state and local tax laws on faith-based grounds. She has since done research and writing that evaluated state and local tax policies across the country in light of the moral principles of Jewish and Christian ethics. Not surprisingly, she found “vast injustice”.
Hamill will be at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem on Monday, March 18 at noon for a luncheon address in the Benson Student Center. There is no charge, but you do need to RSVP if you plan to attend.
Susan Hamill’s presence in North Carolina is being co-sponsored by the Wake Forest School of Divinity, the Institute for Public Engagement at Wake Forest, the NC Justice Center, and the NC Council of Churches. I’ll look forward to seeing all of you who can attend on March 18.
–George Reed, Executive Director