Raising taxes may be the least favorite option for any politician, for good reason. Voters hate it and experts fret about the ripple effects on the economy at large.

So the political response to the recently released Tax Review Commission report certainly was not surprising, particularly coming out this close to a general election.

What, us, raise taxes? Certainly not!

Raised hackles aside, state lawmakers need to give the report a sober reading. While a broad tax increase likely will weigh down economic recovery, legislators still must find a way to resolve the basic problem the consultant has highlighted: The status quo is likely to produce chronic budget shortfalls.

Charting a different course will be a necessary and knotty chore for lawmakers. When they convene in 2013, they are sure to find special interest groups waiting for them, lobbying to get back resources many of them lost in the Great Recession.

The tax commission was created to review the state’s tax policies and revenues every five years, and its latest report points out that the current system is likely to produce a $240 million annual deficit in the state budget by 2025.

As a result, the commission’s hired analysts, a Philadelphia-based consultancy called The PFM Group, made a range of recommendations on how the gap might be bridged.

One element of that mix — bumping up the basic general excise tax rate to 4.5 percent — caused an eruption from the state House of Representatives. In truth, House Speaker Calvin Say and others in leadership were correct to sound the alarm about the potential impact a broad-based tax increase could have on a still-healing state economy.

In a letter written in opposition to the recommendations, more than two dozen lawmakers expressed their belief "that such a significant net tax increase probably will be detrimental to private businesses, residents, or both, and that PFM has not sufficiently analyzed the impact of the tax increase on the economy, businesses and residents."

And state Rep. Isaac Choy, an accountant who was chairman of the last Tax Review Commission, said the consultant failed to consider the steps the Legislature can take to control government spending and manage long-term public employee retirement and health care costs.

This is not really a fair assessment of PFM’s prescription, said Randy Iwase, the former state senator who now chairs the tax panel. For one thing, he said, by state law the commission is restricted to dealing only with the revenue side of the ledger; it cannot recommend changes to spending policy.

Further, an examination of the report reveals that, contrary to some of the criticism, the consultant is well aware of the difference between a GET and the classic sales tax more commonly employed in other states. The "pyramiding effect" of the excise tax — the way the tax being applied with each business transaction compounds costs at each stage — was plainly acknowledged.

Some of the other recommendations were aimed at reducing this effect. For example, PFM Group also proposes eliminating the 0.5 percent rate the GET applies to many business-to-business transactions and restoring some of the exemptions that had been suspended to get the state through the worst of the budget deficit.

There are also proposals for making the GET less regressive, by exempting the first $20,000 of adjusted gross income from it.

The commission also enlisted another tax consultant, William Fox, to study a specific GET: taxes that are lost to e-commerce because online sales don’t yet deliver the state any revenue.

This separate but important issue deserves attention from lawmakers as well.

It’s obvious that, while Hawaii’s economy has recovered some of its lost ground, things aren’t yet booming. This means the imperative of right-sizing government will be around for some time.

Judging by the response to the report, it’s good to hear the lawmakers’ resolve to get a handle on structural cost increases.

Now they have to actually deliver once the state Capitol doors swing open in January.