Rogers offers to fund tax analysis

The head of the Nevada System of Higher Education says he’s willing to spend his own money to fund an economic analysis of the Silver State’s tax structure, a system Rogers believes is out of whack.

Rogers’ proposal comes at a time when Nevada’s tourist-oriented taxation model isn’t delivering enough money to satisfy demands for new roads, additional prisons and more educational opportunities in the fastest-growing state in America.

If a comprehensive study comes to fruition, it could be the most elaborate look at Nevada’s tax structure since 1990 when the Legislature funded a similar analysis.

“We need to look at what our future funding sources are going to be,” said Rogers, who took heat recently for resisting demands by Gov. Jim Gibbons to trim a request for $52 million in new education funding by 60 percent. “As they exist now, they are not adequate.”

A Nevada tax study could quantify how much the state depends on visitors for gambling and sales taxes and could result in recommendations to shift more of the tax burden to other businesses or even individuals, something unpopular in a state with no personal or corporate income taxes.

“There is tweaking I would do. I would not make wholesale changes,” said Carole Vilardo, president of the Nevada Taxpayers Association. “The thing I want to see is more efficiency in the expenditures.”

In addition to constraints on Nevada’s colleges and universities, the state’s residents are coping with congested roads, crowded prisons and public health that ranks in the bottom tier of states.

Earlier this week Gibbons, who campaigned on a promise to reject tax increases, suggested diverting hotel room tax money from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to a highway fund.

Gibbons’ proposal also included shifting 8 percent of the live entertainment tax, another tax that falls heavily on the casino industry, into the roads fund.

Those ideas prompted howls from most major resort operators for the state to look someplace else for money. The resort people say Nevada’s economy and infrastructure are growing too large and diverse for the gambling industry to support without more help from other businesses.

MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman said nongaming businesses that benefit from Nevada’s low-tax environment aren’t passing savings to residents.

“Every single one of them pay taxes in every single state that neighbors Nevada, and they don’t charge Nevadans one penny less for the goods and services they sell here,” Feldman said.

But Feldman was skeptical that a study would help. “Our Legislature routinely ignores them,” he said.

“We’ve studied taxes over and over and over again.”

Making a comprehensive analysis of Nevada’s needs and resources wouldn’t be cheap. Rogers said he’s willing to contribute “a couple hundred thousand” dollars. But the cost probably would exceed $1 million, said Robert Ebel, editor of the 1990 study who went on to work at the World Bank and is now chief economist for the District of Columbia. Ebel said a 1998 study in the district cost $1.1 million.

“I’m very pleased to hear they might be looking at this again,” Ebel said.

“It is a very different state than when we wrote the study.”