Ducey is planning yet another way to raise your taxes

Gov. Doug Ducey has devised yet another way to reach into your pocket without looking like he’s, you know, reaching into your pocket.

He’s planning to collect $155 million more of your money in state income taxes this year. This, by simply doing nothing. Not bad for a guy who ran for gover- nor in 2014 on a pledge to cut the state income tax to “as close to zero as possible.”

This is the second year in a row that Ducey has hit upon a stealth scheme to raise taxes while proclaiming that he will never raise taxes. Last year, it was a new $32 vehicle registration fee that he insists is not a tax. The $185 million collected from that new not-a-tax will be used to fund the state Highway Patrol.

This year, it’s tax conformity, a stealth scheme that allows him to collect more of your money without look- ing like he’s trying to collect more of your money.

Basically, it comes down to this: Arizona needs to conform its allowable tax deductions to 2017 changes in federal tax laws — changes that reduced federal deductions but also lowered the federal tax rate.

But if our leaders simply change how taxable income is calculated but leave state income tax rates unchanged, you will pay more in state taxes this year.

Republican legislators want to reduce the state tax rate so that you don’t wind up paying more.

Ducey and Democratic legislators, meanwhile, want to leave the tax rate as is, to score an extra $155 million.

Ducey, to sock away the extra bucks into the state’s rainy-day fund. Democrats, primarily to boost spending on education and transportation.

On Thursday, the GOP-run House and Senate voted to lower Arizona’s tax rate by 0.11 percentage points to keep state taxes unchanged.

Democrats immediately characterized that as a massive tax cut primarily benefiting wealthy Arizonans — the ones who pay the most in income taxes.

While the top 1 percent of wage earners would see a $1,174 “cut” in taxes, the lowest 20 percent of wage earners (under $24,000) would see a “tax cut” of only $9, according to the Arizona Center for Economic Progress, a liberal think tank.

“We need to invest in Arizona,” Rep. Mitzi Epstein, D-Tempe, told her colleagues. “This income tax cut is not the help they need.”

Here’s my problem with Democrats’ reasoning: It’s not really a tax cut. A tax cut would mean that we pay less in taxes. In this case, the bill passed by Republicans simply ensures that we won’t pay more in taxes. Or will we?

Ducey wants that money — without seeming, you know, to want that money.

“The governor has been clear — we need to conform, and any additional revenue should be put in the rainy-day fund,” Ducey’s spokesman said this week.

Certainly, Arizona needs to find a way to raise more revenue to fund its schools and keep its roads from crumbling into dust. Decades of tax cuts have left the state without reliable funding except in boom times. But sneaking in a tax increase while donning your halo and saying it isn’t?

It’s not nice to fool Arizona taxpayers.

Still, I look for Ducey to veto the Republicans’ bill — and, in doing so, to raise your taxes. This, in a year when the state has a $1 billion surplus.

But, hey, no worries. Just as that $32 you’ll soon be pulling out of your pocket to register your car isn’t a tax increase? Ducey would tell you that extra $9 to $1,174 you’ll be paying in state income taxes isn’t a tax increase, either.

Honest.