Independence Day a good time to think about taxes in Alaska

As Americans celebrate the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this week, it’s good to remember that taxes helped drive the push to break away from the king’s control and the laws of Parliament.

However, it wasn’t so much taxes themselves that rankled the colonists enough to start a war with England, though even then no one particularly liked paying taxes. The battle cry was over how they were imposed on people and businesses. “No taxation without representation” was the equivalent of a viral Twitter feed in 1765, more than a decade before the Declaration of Independence.

That’s whe...