Carla Howell’s philosophical heart is in the right place. She has a reassuringly reasonable Libertarian sense about her, which yearns for a Massachusetts free of expansive, expensive, intrusive government.

Almost every political season, Carla emerges, either as a candidate or, more effectively, as a top-notch referendum architect, poised and ready to transform Commonwealth governance to the size and scope of New Hampshire or Lichtenstein.

In 2002, Carla scared the powers-that-be with an abolish-the-income-tax referendum that garnered 45 percent of the vote. She was back in 2008, but didn’t do as well.

This year, with the economy in turmoil, and a gubernatorial election at hand, Carla is back, as the chairwoman of the Alliance to Roll Back Taxes, with a ballot question that proposes to reduce the state sales tax to 3 percent, from its current 6.25.

In the spring and early summer, before the question was officially certified for the ballot, polls were showing a small majority in favor of the sales tax slash – despite predictable whining from politicians and social service types and newspaper editorial pages.

The general expectation is that whatever Tea Party fervor there might be in a state that only has 14 Republicans, the sales tax slash won’t pass in a year in which the budget deficit may grow embarrassingly large and all those who graze at the government trough are poised and ready to terrify the soccer moms with stories of school classrooms with 106 students per teacher.

Give Carla Howell her due; she at least makes the big-government boys perspire on occasion – and her switch of targets from the income tax to the sales tax will at least prompt a different policy analysis conversation.

While most folks (and their tax accountants and estate planners) are aware that states such as Florida and Texas and New Hampshire seem to get along just fine without a personal income tax, the common folk seem to think that the Old Testament mandated a state sales tax of between 5 and 7 percent – and for sneaky jurisdictions in which cities and counties can add on to the fun, the sales tax levy occasionally hits double digits.

Invisible Pick-Pocket

The politicians have long had affection for sales taxes, based on the notion that they are, if not invisible, at least less jarring than an income tax that grabs a chunk out of every paycheck.

The sales tax has been seen as an anti-business, “transaction” tax of sorts, inhibiting local investment and growth.

Do the common folk notice? Well, when states enact their “tax holiday” sales tax nonsense during back-to-school buying season, consumers seem to respond. The question is whether they are responding to what they perceive to be a real cost savings – or merely grasping a tool to stick out their tongues at the taxman, in a low-key sort of way.

On the grand philosophical landscape, income taxes are thought to be the more lefty-tinged, progressive way for the state to steal our money, with the sales tax a regressive taking of funds from all of us, rich or poor, who innocently shop for our taxable necessities, no matter our income.

There are five states with no sales tax; even as we speak, Oregon legislators are sniffing around to see if they can sneak a sales tax past the rabble, to help close a budget deficit.

The first state to enact a sales tax was Mississippi in 1932 – and its ease of collection and broad base proved to be appealing to politicians almost everywhere.

The proposed cut to 3 percent in Massachusetts is largely a political compromise; it seems less draconian than proposing abolition, but it would in theory starve the angry beast of government and motivate it to be more efficient.

In this economic environment, Carla and her little band of Libertarian cowboys might do more of a public service stumping for privatizing almost everything – and forcing city and state agencies and services to consolidate or merge or disappear.

She would argue that the urge to economize won’t exist, until the tax revenue is crimped – and that’s a fair argument. But, this is Massachusetts – and dramatic tax whacking isn’t in the gene pool.