Posted on 05/08/2011 7:24:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
Unemployment is rising, the federal government is broke, and so are many of the states. Now more than ever America needs its various governments to exercise restraint, and to scale-back on spending.
And in the midst of this environment a stunning proposal has emerged in the nearly insolvent state of California: a third income tax.
The proposal is actually worse than a mere “additional” income tax – and I’ll explain this in a moment. First let’s look at the “other two” income taxes.
For the record, if you’re an American and you work and you earn personal income, your U.S. federal government imposes a tax on that income (most of us are well acquainted with this). And workers in forty-three of our fifty states also have their personal income taxed even further by their state government (the states of Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming do not impose a state income tax on their residents).
But now California, with an average statewide unemployment rate of over 12% (in some regions the rate is over 20%) and a budget deficit of somewhere between $10 and $15 billion, is considering the imposition of a third income tax. The additional income tax rate would vary, according to which region of the state one lives in, and would be imposed directly by school districts and county governments.
Many of California’s public school districts (there are over 1000 of them) are themselves broke, just like the state government. And because of a California law that was brought about by passage of a ballot initiative back in 1978 (it was famously known as “Proposition 13”), California school districts cannot simply do what most public school districts in America do, and continually raise property taxes higher and higher.
So in the absence of additional state tax dollars, and without the option of raising local property taxes, California school districts are searching for additional revenue streams to feed their never-ending spending addictions. In response, the California legislature is contemplating a new law that would literally grant local school districts broad new authorities to tax personal income – a third income tax for California residents – according to the needs of the individual school districts themselves.
Along with the ability to impose a third income tax on residents’ income, this newly proposed power would also grant school districts the authority to impose additional sales taxes on alcohol, cigarettes, oil drilling (believe it or not there is some of this still going on in California), “sugary beverages,” and “medicinal marijuana.” Teachers unions in California are elated with the idea of “all the additional tax revenue” that school districts would theoretically have to spend on unionized teacher contracts, and Governor Jerry Brown, who is indebted to government employee unions, would theoretically stand to gain politically from the idea.
But while Jerry Brown and his government employee union friends are seeing dollar signs, California business owners – already saddled with undue taxes, regulations, healthcare and worker’s compensation insurance requirements – are seeing chaos. In what has been described as “a confusing patchwork of tax rates for both businesses and individuals,” business advocacy groups are reacting to the legislation with horror, realizing the disparity it could create among businesses operated on opposite sides of a school district boundary.
Given that each of California’s 1000-plus school districts would have the authority to set their own rates on the additional income and sales taxes, both businesses and individuals would be faced with the chaos and inequality of paying different income and sales tax rates depending on what public school district they found themselves in. As Gina Rodriquez, vice president of the California Taxpayers Association noted, this would pit “school district against school district.”
In addition to the chaos and confusion that the school district taxes would create, there is the disturbing fact that some people – indeed several people in the California legislature – actually think it is a good idea to levy a third income tax on a citizenry that is already living with double-digit unemployment. This is perhaps the greatest injustice entailed in California’s new scheme.
The very fact that California’s legislators would propose such an idea underscores the perverse, incestuous relationship between government employee unions, and the Democrat Party. Nobody can argue from the standpoint of sound economics that a third income tax will do anything but harm the overall California economy, but that seemingly doesn’t matter to Governor Brown and his fellow Democrats.
As long as Democrat politicians can continue to re-distribute increasing amounts of wealth into the hands of unionized government employees, the unionized government employees will continue to do the grassroots political work to keep Democrat politicians in office. The government employees gratify the politicians, and the politicians gratify the government employees – and the person who works and creates wealth in the private sector pays for it all.
Noble statesmen and women across the country have recently begun to say “no” to this kind of destructive public policy. But the perversion rages on – for now – in California.
ping
Personally, that's a great idea.
Nothing like imposing a draconian tax by your local school board to get the "tax slaves" attention and mad as a hornets nest
Imagine what type of blow-back they will get.LOL
Should make for some very interesting school board meeting and elections
The school broad can't blame some faceless bureaucrat in DC to pass the pain.
Your prof was probably referencing a 1940s era speech to congress or somesuch, iirc, by Beardsley Ruml. He came up withe the idea or mechanism of income witholding by IRS, btw.
Hopefully, their citizens.....
I like that term.
For some areas (which already have a local income tax) it would be a fourth income tax.
The citizens at the voting booth, that's who.
I know if my state proposed this, my state rep would have me personally at her door making sure they understood they will never ever again win a election
Local school board proposed new taxes would have a mob at their meetings and quite frankly a unruly one
>>>It wont be long before California tries to pass a law, that would allow the state government to disallow someone to move their business out of state.<<<
California won’t need to pass a law... the Feds are already prohibiting it:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2709253/posts
Ping
Yup - Ruml wrote a paper entitled “Taxes for revenue are obsolete” in 1946.
What is remarkable is the number of people who seem to believe at some level that theft is wrong, but not if legislators vote on it. They basically enjoy using the power of the state as a kind of club to beat up the rest of us. There is no way out of this mess without a lot of pain. The perps, moreover, are not suddenly going to be interested in facts or logic or common sense reality. They will more likely try to effect a scorched earth kind of policy as they are utterly incapable of ever admitting their cherished delusions were just that - delusions. Subsidizing failure requires
ever increasing amounts of subsidy, which is what we’ve seen for the last 50 years. Now that “revenue streams” have collapsed it will get interesting.
I have a large number of suppliers (mfg and importers) in CA. They are being murdered by the state. They have to compete with other suppliers all over the country.
One owner told me it is hell trying to do business there. He is frequently approached by NV and other states to move there.
I have one apparel company near LA that I buy from & ship to my decorator in Ontario (CA). From there the goods get shipped to my clients in various other states. CA keeps trying to charge me (the wholesaler) sales tax because I am moving the goods one time within the state.
I have a sales tax number in Florida, which is accepted by all but CA, MD & I think TN.
I have one client (not large) that I sell to in CA and I swear, if the state gives me any more crap I am going to quit selling them. I have to buy from companies in CA, I sure as heck don’t have to sell to them.
Which illustrates a point rarely made. CA discourages businesses outside the state from doing business with companies inside the state, which means a net loss of income to the state. Idiots.
Good idea. Bus all the school district employees from two contiguous districts out into the desert, give them a few gallons of water and some stone tools, and see who survives. The winners could take over both districts, but only with the personnel who are left standing ...
This is a another measure of the destruction of the family.
Every unwed mother who gets $$ to have more children contributes to the destruction of our society.
Things are going just as planned for those who are using the liberals to overload our society with handouts which creates loosers who will be leaches on society for their entire life.
When my daughter lived in Maryland, she paid federal, state, county and city income tax. Imagine what that left out of a gross income of $32k? Which, even without taxes is practically poverty level.
What? You are kidding us.
Oh' wait. Paul Krugman might disagree / S
KOS, DU, Huffpost libs will be crushed.
When we lived in Pennsylvania, in addition to federal and state income tax, we also paid income tax to the township hubby worked in, the township we lived in, and the school district in addition to 30 mills property tax to the school district. Moving to Washington was like getting a $10,000 raise.
So! A school district income tax would be a fifth income tax for her.
People need to get involved with their schools..
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This is like peeing in the ocean hoping to warm it up. It like training a pig to be an Olympic ice dancer. It’s like fighting a forest fire with a water pistol.
Should I go on.
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