Posted on 07/08/2010 6:56:17 AM PDT by Spydergoo
This is a Republican proposal from the House Speaker.
LOL......now that was good......:)
And the author of Chattanooga's property tax increase is - are you ready for this - a Republican also. Mayor Littlefield's largest donar was SEIU. Littlefield was instrumental in getting the city to give so much taxpayer-funded freebies to VW.
In order to pay for the taxpayer-funded perks given to VW, he first went on an annexing binge, trying to grab as much high-value neighborhoods into the city as possible. Then, after a strong lawsuit stopped annexation in its tracks, he proposed a huge 33% property tax increase. It got widdled down to 15%, but given the city's spending habits involving things outside of the role of government, they should be giving taxpayers a 15% cut in taxes.
Littlefield is also in favor of a regional government instead of separate city governments for Chattanooga and the surrounding communities. He wants to be able to tax everyone in the county to pay for the transgressions of the cronies in Chattanooga. And, he wants the government to be even larger and more distant from those of us that actually pay the taxes.
Needless to say, his political career is about to end.
Anyway, regardless of the party, unequal taxation is nothing but cronyism. They're stealing from one group of taxpayers to buy the votes of another. Liberals do this with welfare and the "progressive" tax rate, and RINOs do it through their favored businesses.
It's wrong either way. Taxes should be flat, and should apply equally to all parties. Then, the most thrifty state will be the most attractive to business, not the state that can redistribute the most.
Tax incentives are the same as subsidies because somehow the difference in tax abatement for one company has to be made up by collecting the money from other companies in the form of higher taxes.
Frankly the taxpayers money, collected on every business in Missouri would be used to subsidize jobs in one city with no benefit to the rest of the state. If my taxes were abated on my business I might be more inclined to expand. But when my taxes are expected to pay for another profitable company to expand, I call it BS. The state is picking a winner, Union jobs and all, and I lose.
Actually, the way they set it up, although the break is designed to keep Ford, GM and Toyota (who both have factories in Missouri, too) can also get tax breaks, as can suppliers.
While it is backwards that they choose a particular industry, rather than lowering tax rates for ALL businesses, at least they didn’t treat competitors in the same industry differently, unlike Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana have all done - where one company gets a massive subsidy to start a factory, while a direct competitor that has been paying taxes for 20+ years or more is not given similar treatment to allow them to keep their plants competitive.
Some of these subsidies have grown so big that the state is essentially covering the wages of all the workers in the new plant for several years, then turning around and telling the old competitor that they don’t deserve equal treatment when they provide an equal number of jobs (because “creating” new jobs is sexy, but preserving old ones isn’t).
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