Joe Soucheray: Soak the rich? That's Dayton's trust fund talking

Repeated again the other day in a letter to the editor by Ron Schally of Stacy, Minn., was the contention that Gov. Mark Dayton's family trust sits in South Dakota, avoiding much of his " 'tax the wealthy' pitch." I sympathize with Mr. Schally, although I can't quite nail down the location of Dayton's trust, how much it is worth and what exactly it means for the trust to be sitting in South Dakota.

I called the guy who does my taxes, but being a smart fellow, he was out enjoying the few days of summer we might get this year. I was going to ask him what it means for somebody to have a trust fund sitting in South Dakota, as opposed to, say, Peru or Nebraska.

The Dayton trust is Minnesota's own version of the Obama birth certificate controversy. Obama has made available for display a copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate, which I am entirely prepared to accept, despite a host of conspiracy theories regarding the typeface on the document. I don't believe Dayton has showed us any paperwork. His financial statements certainly show him paying income taxes in Minnesota, income presumably received from the trust, but I am unclear as to whether he has ever sat down with an ink-stained wretch and laid the whole Dayton financial plan out on the table.

During Dayton's campaign for governor, his spokes-woman, Katharine Tinucci, told reporters that there is no Dayton trust in the Cayman Islands or the British Virgin Islands.

"The bank moved the Dayton trust to South Dakota. Mark has no control over the trust. He makes no decisions regarding investments."

OK. We're getting somewhere. There is a Dayton trust in South Dakota, perhaps as many as three. Tinucci said there was a trust established before Mark's birth, one when he was 4 and one in the 1960s. These trusts, of course, are understandable and legal and all flowed from generations of us buying our Madras shirts at Dayton's.

And yes, I certainly understand that Mark didn't climb behind the wheel of a 1976 Chevrolet at some point in his life and drive a bag of money down to Sioux Falls for purposes of sheltering it from Minnesota taxation. When you are a scion, you end up with people, bankers, lawyers, accountants and financial advisers.

These people, or the bank, have moved the Dayton money around and Dayton, who does not appear to have flashy needs or gluttonous spending habits, lives off whatever he receives from it, I think about $177,000 a year or somewhere in that ballpark, if I remember reading his Economic Interest Statement correctly as recently as last September, during the campaign.

Well, maybe it squares with you, but it doesn't square with me that the governor wants to increase taxes on the hardest-working people in Minnesota, there being a connection between hard work and higher incomes. Wealth, on the other hand, is a store of money, a supply, a reserve, which in Dayton's case, for example, bleeds off an income on which he is taxed and on which he certainly has been forthright in paying in his taxes.

Big deal. He can afford to. In fact, I would suggest that he can so afford to that it clouds his perception of reality. If you have a store of money you might be more inclined to spend more than you take in. Or, put another way, what's the problem with paying higher taxes?

And that remains the Dayton position during this standoff with Republicans leading to a potential government shutdown. He wants to spend more than the state takes in and accuses Republicans of being obstinate in their refusal to see the virtue in his thinking.

There is no virtue in his thinking. It's the thinking of a guy who gets his income by going to the mailbox, just like the growing legions of the entitled he represents, and on whose behalf he wants to play Robin Hood. If he gets his way, the government grows. There is a bigger baseline the next time and the time after that and so on, until the state runs out of hard-working, higher-income people to foot the bill.

Dayton doesn't have a leg to stand on in making this call for higher taxes, not even one toe.

Far too many have a skewed perception of just who "the rich" are. When you here that term you probably visualize the idle rich, living off of inherited money, lounging, conceited, out-of-touch like Paris Hilton or, say Mark Dayton

These are not the people who will be paying the tax. The overwhelming majority of those actually paying the tax will be small business owners leading teams of also successful employees who have finally made after years of sacrifice and struggle.

We would do well to remember the parable about the Golden Goose and the Tenth Commandment - one is a good lesson for children and the other, well, a warning from God that we ignore at our personal peril.

... Gov. Mark Dayton's family trust sits in South Dakota, avoiding much of his " 'tax the wealthy' pitch."

Well look at what we have here... yet another flaming liberal politician who takes the classic, very well-worn liberal approach "do as I say, not as I do" when it comes to taxes. Past applicants of this approach include Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters, Tim Geitner, Tom Daschle...

Why isn't the GOP piling down on this guy for doing this?

I am so tired of this demo campaign to “tax the rich”. Of course in their credo they insert “high income” for wealth. In other words, what exactly is rich...someone who works hard, puts together a decent business and EARNS a high income or someone who has a host of assets? To me it is the latter but then again I am just tired of this whole notion so I am infavor of a fair tax on consumption or flat tax across the board on income top to bottom which would settle the argument once and for all.

I advocate a flat tax. That way everyone has the same percentage of ‘skin’ in the game but those who make more pay more. When the Libs say ‘tax the rich’ they are only talking about high income. They would leave the accrued and inherited wealth alone. Of course, most of the wealthy Libs in Congress are Trust Fund babies who would not suffer inordinately.

I am so tired of this demo campaign to “tax the rich”.

Me too. I don't know how it is in Minnesota but at the federal level half the households pay no tax whatsoever. If the government needs more money it can go after them.

I advocate a flat tax.

If this is a flat income tax then by definition it will exempt everyone who either doesn't work or works under the table, just like the current income tax does (to the point that over half of all households pay no federal taxes). I'd rather go with the FairTax or some other type of consumption tax instead. It will ensure that more people pay.

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