...;0)
Posted on 01/17/2009 11:47:57 AM PST by Steelfish
California controller to suspend tax refunds, welfare checks, student grants John Chiang announces that his office will suspend $3.7 billion in payments owed to Californians starting Feb. 1, because with no budget in place the state lacks sufficient cash to pay its bills.
By Evan Halper and Patrick McGreevy January 17, 2009 Reporting from Sacramento --
The state will suspend tax refunds, welfare checks, student grants and other payments owed to Californians starting Feb. 1, Controller John Chiang announced Friday. Chiang said he had no choice but to stop making some $3.7 billion in payments in the absence of action by the governor and lawmakers to close the state's nearly $42-billion budget deficit. More than half of those payments are tax refunds. John Chiang In San Diego, financial free fall -- and... California to delay some payments Southern California officials draw up wish lists for federal stimulus money
The controller said the suspended payments could be rolled into IOUs if California still lacks sufficient cash to pay its bills come March or April. "It pains me to pull this trigger," Chiang said at a news conference in his office. "But it is an action that is critically necessary."
The payments to be frozen include nearly $2 billion in tax refunds; $300 million in cash grants for needy families and the elderly, blind and disabled; and $13 million in grants for college students.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Bankruptcy anyone?
Wow. I’ve been proven wrong. They will suspend welfare after all.
The message is clear to Californians. Do not overpay your taxes. You become an unsecured creditor, probably last in line for reimbursement. I suggest that California suspend all refundable tax credits (welfare) and return all tax overpayments.
Good reason as any to make sure you write a small check on tax day.....
They could've chosen any basket of payments to delay. The ones they used are the ones that will set a fire under the legislature to get a budget, (no matter how bad), passed.
This idiot was elected to bring the budget under control, but instead wanted to promote embryonic stem research and attack global warming.
We should never elect anyone who lived a life of big, easy money.
Read this in the paper this a.m. Need this at the national level.
Says cash grants only.If the checks don’t make it to the ghetto on time all hell would break loose.
...;0)
In the real world this is known as insolvency.
I wonder if a taxpayer who is denied a refund can now force the State into bankruptcy?
Why? Pressure on the taxpayers to put pressure on the legislature, which will then increase taxes, which releases payments to the taxpayers, and EVERYONE IS HAPPY!
Exactly. Refunds are a scam. You’re giving the government an interest-free loan. Better just to figure out what your deductions are going to be for the year, and snail-mail the IRS a check one minute before midnight 04/15.
Don’t pay state income tax
I wonder how Robert Ringer is feeling now that his words on government have been proven true in the most visible way.
Fine, stop my tax refund. Hold it as long as you wish, but I demand the same interest and penalties that the state would charge me if I withheld funds due to it. Some tax group should form a class action suit against the state, and force it to abide by it’s own rules. If it can live with charging us loan sharking rates, I can live with charging it loan sharking rates.
So they owe nearly $4 billion in payments that they’ll suspend, yet they’ve increased their budget $8 billion from the last year. Idiots! Just trim the budget! Stop throwing away my money!
How is suspending tax refunds not theft? And, shouldn’t they be required to pay interest as well?
Oh Crap, now they will be coming to Arizona!
Yeap, and bringing all their deeply held beliefs with them; the same beliefs that coincidently destroyed their current host state. BORG invasion; & resistance of course, is futile.
Theft, pure and simple.
There was some talk recently of not paying the legislators until a budget was passed. Good idea, but since the legislators control this type of action, it’ll never fly.
I missed the part in the article where the state legislature and state senior officials are going without their paychecks (he said sarcastically)
I was wondering the same.
Exactly right. No one wants the blind and elderly to suffer. Unfortunately they get lumped in with the tens of thousands of disability fakers.
Suspend welfare checks? Oakland should be fun to watch!
Which book? - if you would help my memory - I read three of them, and cannot seem to recall that point. Did I miss a book?
Reason 263 why i like Sarah. She isn’t from an easy life, big money background.
There are going to be riots, and not just in Oakland. God help us, is all I can say.
Never set your witholding so high the the gubmit owes you money when due. They have enough of your dough as it is.
Yeah, that surprised me. Since when do RATS not pay non-workers?
"Ach der lieber.....Kaleefurrneeah bankrupt? Duz dat mean
I gotda chainch my plans abat runnin for prezeedunt?"
" Chonny and Wooty, you two RINOS bettah make udder plans.
Ai gotda vunny veeling dah Reepublucan Potty tinks RINOS are pure crapola."
" Ai hear RINOS kin get jobs as Val-Mart greeters, Home Depot paint mixers
unt McD's ketchop pumpers, or vaiters at Ved Lopstah."
"Ai kiss anyboty's tookus to gets dah money to bailout Kaleefurnia. Mebee Ai
trow Maria off dah ski livt at Sun Valley. Ai getda nashynal symputty ven
anodder Kennedee goes kaput."
Complete with "forced loans" to the crown.
Another thing... no state income tax is a very good thang... God blessed the Lone Star State ;-)
I tend to agree, although George W. Bush was raised wealthy (or maybe that makes your point, depending on how you view "W"). I would also point out that Arnold's father was a policeman in Austria who always told his son that he would never amount to anything, that his brother was the one who would make something of himself (can you name Arnold's brother? I can't).
Nobody gave Arnold anything. He came to America a broke immigrant, and literally worked his ass off to become Mr. Olympia, the highest title in professional body building, seven times.
Which leads me (and perhaps you) to wonder - WTF anyone who had to work hard for everything he ever got (until of course he married Maria Shriver), be a LIBERAL?!?!? That's the piece of the puzzle that doesn't make any sense to me.
This is a ploy to force a federal bailout - but I would like to see it come about. Ending welfare would be like throwing up - it's bothersome when you do it, but you feel so much better afterwards.
Let the riots begin. And I can’t think of a more deserving “”liberal utopia”” for it to start things off in.
Welcome to the “hope and change” of an Obamanation.
I snail mail mine around April fools day..
LOL!
They know this will put pressure on Washington to give them a bail out. I can not believe people are foolish enough to believe CA is going to suspend welfare for any significant length of time.
We'll see if it happens. Just imagine the riots if they do suspend welfare checks.
“Looking out For #1”
He points out that the government often does things that would get you or I thrown in jail. Well, if anyone needed a crystal-clear example, the government of California refusing to pay its debts is the best I’ve seen.
A class action suit is a great idea.
They should pay interest and penalties at the same rate they charge us when we are late.
Also, they need to allow all businesses to suspend deducting California income tax from paychecks until each employee has had the $ amount suspended that he should have been refunded.
Nice bookkeeping nightmare for the state, huh?
Is a state note money? can you take it to a bank and swap it for cash like the days when states issued notes that were money?
If I get an IOU can I file Chapter 7 bankruptcy against the state?
The tax refunds is the biggest mistake. Paying back the refunds would amount to a stimulus check, in that the people will put that money back into the economy. The kicker here is that the tax refunds go back to the people who overpaid them.
The welfare checks and student grants are wealth redistribution, and should be suspended first. The welfare checks would likely be spent at local businesses and/or utilities, but the student grants will just go back to the state as college tuition in the UC and Cal State systems.
-PJ
it might put a dent in immigration
“No one wants the blind and elderly to suffer.”
Speak for yourself!
BTW, i’m 71.
Agreed...and so will each taxpayer who gets an “IOU” instead of a refund. If California thinks it has cash flow problems now, just wait until a majority of those due refunds this year make sure that they won’t be owed one in future years!
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