That was a poorly thought out tax bill. Texas already had a franchise/business tax with a lot of exceptions/loopholes but they screwed it up even worse. And all the paperwork you have to fill out just to prove you owe no tax sucks.
I think he just lost my vote...
Perry trumped this tax on business as necessary to relieve homeowners of the burden of the school tax. As a homeowner in Texas, I can tell you that this tax is a serious burden. I’ve owned homes in two other states and Texas is much, MUCH higher. I believe that we were only second to Wisconsin for that. (On a $120,000 home in Arizona, we paid less than $600 in annual PT. The first year here, we paid more than $1200 for a $100,000 home. Five years later - last year - we paid more than $1800. I don’t remember the number this spring, but it actually went down. I don’t know how much of that was the tax break and how much was from the serious decline in property value.)
Older people and the disabled didn’t get much of a break either. (That’s my main issue.)
The gripe we had here was that the business tax passed, but we didn’t get our drop in property taxes. After a lot of screaming (and an election last year), we finally got some relief last spring.
There's alot of other things about Perry's decision making that's poorly thought out.
TTC
Gardasil
Support of La Raza
Texas DREAM Act
Establishment of Corporate Welfare Programs (ETF/TEF)
At best, Perry is a blundering fool rubbing elbows with cronies while wasting Texan's tax money in the process. At worst, he's a big governemnt statist liberal republican with an election primary timed innoculation of conservative rhetoric designed to mask his true condition from conservative voters.
Will the real Rick Perry please show himself? Not until it's too late (again). See 2000, 2004, 2008 for a historical perspective of GOP Perry's coming attractions.