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This article comments on the article by researcher J. J. Chrisman and colleagues which deals with the setting of new tax rates for Peoria, Illinois. The point of concern deals with the relative importance assigned to the new tax burdens to be borne by those people in the various income brackets. The author finds it incomprehensible how any scheme that advocates increasing the average tax burden (ATB) on low income households by nearly seven percent--while simultaneously decreasing the ATB on middle and high income households by approximately eight and ten percent, respectively--can be proposed as an aid in finding an "equitable" tax structure, as has been implied by the authors. Viewed in relative measures, the results are even more startling. Under the old tax rates, the ATB for middle income households was 165 percent that for the low income households; this falls to approximately 142 percent under the new rate structure. For high income households, the old ATB was 183 percent of that for low income households, decreasing to 153 percent under the new plan.

The article describes an interactive multiobjective linear programming (MOLP) methodology to provide the city manager of Peoria, Illinois with insights necessary to restructure the city's tax system. The need to respond to the protests of citizens over ever increasing tax bills must be balanced against the need to maintain the levels of public services that they expect. Historically, tax planners have relied on property taxes as the major source of city revenues. An equitable tax structure minimizes the sacrifice of individual taxpayers and balances their tax burdens with their perceptions of the value of additional public goods. Recently, some cities have began experimenting with the sales tax as an alternative to the property tax. In the early 1980s, however, Peoria's industrial base began to erode as several major plants closed, product demand declined, and Caterpillar Tractor Co., the major employer in the area, suffered an extended strike. MOLP provides efficient rather than optimal solutions to problems involving multiple objectives. The city manager indicated several objectives that he wanted to achieve through tax restructuring, including the reduction of property taxes.