To the Editor:

They’re baaaaaaaaack. Yes, your N.C. Legislature is back in session and talking tax cuts. Hold on to your wallets. These are the people who have systematically increased your taxes since 2010. While your paycheck may look a bit better since then, your wallet and bank account have taken some serious hits.

Beginning in 2010, Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, and his colleagues began eliminating many tax deductions that many of you depend upon. Things like child-care expenses, your educational expenses, the deduction for your college savings plan and a host of other items are no longer deductible when you file your taxes every year In 2012, they eliminated a major deduction for small businesses. Your income tax bill may actually have gone up after losing all of these deductions gone.

Then, in 2014, they went directly into your wallet. Sales taxes were imposed on things that you do and use routinely. While I don’t go to a lot of movies and concerts, those of you who do now pay sales tax on that entertainment. Service contracts on appliances are taxed, as are the electricity and gas that you use to run them. On the education side, meal plans at your college or university are taxed and the sales tax holiday used to purchase supplies for the new school year is gone. There’s more, and it’s a long list.

Hopefully, you did not buy or plan to buy a mobile home. The tax on those is now the standard sales tax of 4.75 percent (up from 2 percent) and the $300 maximum on tax is now gone. The same thing happened with the increasingly popular modular homes.

Since April 1 of this year, you now pay sales tax on the labor for repairs to your car — or anything else you need to have repaired or serviced.

There were, in fact, income tax cuts, but the benefits were not shared universally. Early analyses of this strategy indicated that with the income tax cuts, the loss of deductions and increases in sales taxes, the break-even point was above $70,000. If you made more, you won. If you made less, you lost. Keep in mind that only half of the households in Macon County make more than about  $37,000. You probably lost.

Call Sen. Jim Davis and tell him to just raise teacher pay. Then he should come home before he does any more damage to your wallet.

John Gladden

Franklin