We hope that today’s “READERS FORUM” will provoke honest and open dialogue concerning issues that we, as responsible citizens of this community, need to address in a rational and responsible way? 

WHATS ON YOUR MIND TODAY?

Todays“Readers Poll” question is: How do you rank Evansville City Council job performance in 2018?

If you would like to advertise on the CCO please contact us at City-County Observer@live.com

“READERS FORUM” DECEMBER 09, 2018

By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com 

INDIANAPOLIS – It’s a question of what we value.

And what we don’t.

I’m talking over the air with Dr. Camueal Wright of CareSource, Donetta Gee-Weiler with Community Health and journalist Giles Bruce about Indiana’s rates of infant and maternal mortality – the numbers of babies and mothers who die in our state.

Those numbers are abysmal.

And tragic.

Indiana ranks 45^th out of 50 when it comes to infant mortality. We are the worst state in the Midwest when it comes to protecting the lives of children. Our numbers are 50 percent higher than the national average. They have hovered there for quite some time.

We don’t do any better by the women who bear these children. Indiana ranks 46^th out of 50 in the maternal mortality lists. Again, we Hoosiers reside at the bottom of the Midwest rankings. And, again, we have been there for some time.

I ask Wright, Gee-Weiler, and Bruce why Indiana does such a poor job of caring for pregnant women and infants.

Many of the answers are complicated.

Those answers deal with questions of accessibility to food, to transportation, to competent health care, and to other fundamental support systems. Pregnant women who don’t receive adequate medical counsel and help – particularly early on – face much greater risks of tragedy for themselves and their children.

In too many cases, though, that care isn’t available, isn’t affordable or getting to it is difficult, if not impossible, for mothers-to-be.

Bruce, Gee-Weiler, and Wright make the point that, while Indiana’s numbers are particularly bad, the rest of the country also isn’t meeting this challenge all that well.

Bruce, a health-care reporter, notes that the United States has some of the worst public-health statistics in the industrialized world, even though we Americans spend more on health care than any other nation does. He says, for example, we’re seeing life expectancies decline in America while people are living longer in most other parts of the world.

Some of that has to do with the way we deliver health care in this country.

So long as we view providing medical care as an opportunity for private interests – particularly insurance companies – to reap often huge profits, we will have a dynamic that encourages the health-care industry to jack up prices and write off potential losses.

Such as women and small children.

But some of this is not that complicated.

One listener calls in to argue that, in effect, we Hoosiers are getting what we pay for. He says Indiana ranks near the bottom – 49^th out of 50 – when it comes to public health spending. Our rate of investment is about two-thirds that of the national average.

The states that spend more on public health have fewer women and children dying.

It’s that simple.

To his credit, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb has made infant and maternal mortality one of his top priorities for the upcoming legislative session of the General Assembly. He wants to require better and more thorough counseling and advocacy for pregnant Hoosier women.

Many of his ideas and plans make sense and likely would make a difference.

But the real test is more basic.

If a woman can’t get to or can’t afford a doctor or even decent food, then she still will be at risk. The only way we Hoosiers solve that problem is by investing more money in public health – in making sure that the most vulnerable among us aren’t dying because we don’t care enough to save them.

The conservative British politician Nigel Lawson once said, “To govern is to choose.”

That is what confronts us now – a choice.

We can choose to invest resources in saving women’s and children’s lives.

Or we can continue to let them die.

It’s a question of what we value.

And what we don’t.

FOOTNOTE:  John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

Majority Justices: RV Dealer Must Pay Taxes In ‘Sham’ Transactions

A northern Indiana recreational vehicle dealer who tried to avoid paying Indiana sales tax on out-of-state transactions by moving the RVs into Michigan before handing over the keys to customers must repay those taxes after a divided Indiana Supreme Court entered summary judgment in favor of the Indiana Department of Revenue.

Justice Mark Massa, writing a majority opinion joined by Chief Justice Loretta Rush and Justice Christopher Goff, reversed an August ruling from the Indiana Tax Court on Wednesday in Richardson’s RV, Inc. v. Indiana Department of State Revenue, 18S-TA-22. The case centers around Middlebury-based Richardson’s RV, which sells recreational vehicles both onsite and online.

Customers who lived in Indiana or in one of the 40 states with reciprocal tax exemption agreements with the Hoosier state would take possession of their RVs directly at the dealership. But the remaining out-of-state customers were given the option of either paying Indiana’s sales tax rate or their home state’s rate.

“For the non-reciprocal-state customers choosing to pay their home state’s rate, the delivery method Richardson’s employed was unorthodox,” Massa wrote. Specifically, Richardson’s would drive the RV across the state line into Michigan, a non-reciprocal state, before giving customers their keys, thereby avoiding Indiana sales tax.

After discovering this practice in an audit, the Department of Revenue issued proposed assessments of nearly $250,000 in unpaid taxes. On appeal, the Tax Court granted summary judgment to Richardson’s, but after hearing oral argument in March, the majority of the Indiana Supreme Court reversed.

“When personal property is delivered to the purchaser in a state other than Indiana solely to avoid paying sales tax — with no other legitimate business purpose — we will not ‘exalt artifice above reality,’” Massa wrote. “… Instead, we will consider these deliveries part of ‘retail transactions made in Indiana’ subject to Indiana sales tax. I.C. section 6-2.5-2-1(a).”

Determining the purpose of the Michigan deliveries was tax-related, not business-related, the majority determined those deliveries were “a sham for taxation purposes.” Massa said Indiana Code section 6-2.5-5-39(c) requires non-reciprocal-state customers to pay Indiana sales tax, and “Indiana businesses cannot absorb — or completely ignore — sales tax to entice customers.”

The issue of the Michigan deliveries was, thus, remanded for the Tax Court to determine how much Richardson’s owes in taxes. The case was also remanded for the Tax Court to determine if four other non-reciprocal-state deliveries — in California, North Dakota, Nova Scotia and Buchanan, Michigan — were taxable.

“Even though these deliveries outwardly differ from the typical Michigan Deliveries, Richardson’s designated no evidence showing any independent, non-tax-related business purpose that motivated them,” Massa wrote. “So we remand to the Tax Court to determine that.”

story continues below

But in a dissenting opinion, Justice Steven David said Richardson’s “followed the letter of the law” under 45 Ind. Admin. Code section 2.2-5-54(b), which holds that “(s)ales of tangible personal property which are delivered to the purchaser in a state other than Indiana for use in a state other than Indiana are not subject to gross retail tax or use tax.” David said the appropriate remedy for the DOR is not in the courts, but rather in a revised sales tax regulation.

Justice Geoffrey Slaughter joined David’s opinion and also penned his own dissent, finding similarly that the DOR “does not claim that buyers of the disputed RVs intend to use their vehicles in Indiana.”

“I would hold that complying with the law is never a ‘sham,’ even if the result is to deprive the Department of tax dollars it would prefer to collect,” Slaughter wrote in his opinion, which was joined by David.

Slaughter ended his dissent by challenging the Supreme Court’s deference to the Tax Court on matters of tax law as “unwarranted within our hierarchical judiciary.”

“In addition to the tax court, our state judiciary is replete with various specialized courts …,” he wrote. “Do we likewise owe deference to the legal conclusions of these tribunals? Surely, the answer is no, and not because the judges who populate these courts lack subject-matter expertise … .

“…As Indiana’s court of last resort, we should reaffirm our supremacy to ‘say what the law is’, and that includes Indiana’s tax law.”