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Wed, 26 Apr 2006
The House Finance Committee yesterday passed a law cutting the taxes of people who earn more than around $250,000 per year. The tax cuts will increase over the next five or six years, until they reach over $75 million, according to House Finance, or over $100 million, according to me.
These people are, of course, virtually the only people in Rhode Island whose state and local taxes are significantly lower now than they were ten years ago, so I'm not really sure what the problem is. In other words, yes, the plan is to give a cut to the people who need it least, and who already got their tax cut over the past few years.
As an alternative to this very expensive and foolish plan, I propose this instead. The state shall subsidize the cost of a bi-weekly massage for everyone whose family income is over $250,000. At about $30 per visit, this will also be approximately $7 million per year, but at least the cost won't double next year.
13:11 - 26 Apr 2006 [/y6/ap]
Fri, 21 Apr 2006
Posting has been light while I finish up a big project, but news of the Senate tax reform plan brought me back. You can read about the plan here, but here's a summary:
- Reduce the property tax levy cap to 4.0% per year from the current 5.5%.
- Reduce the cap on state budget increases from 5.5% per year to 4.0% per year.
- Increase the property tax circuit breaker for the elderly and disabled.
- Eliminate "unfunded mandates" of the state on cities and towns.
And here's why it's so stupid.
- Capping the levy increases
- Who thinks that towns are
increasing their budgets just because they want to? Who is it who
believes that city councillors and town managers are not seeking ways
to reduce their budgets? Show me one of those people and I will show
you someone who doesn't pay much attention to their local government.
Or I will show you an idiot.
Announcing to the world that you will insist that municipal governments cut their budgets is another way to say that you actually have no clue at all how municipal governments can possibly lower their budget, but also that you don't really care.
- Capping the state budget
- What a grand idea. Presumably after forcing all those spendthrift towns to cut their budgets, we have to make darn sure that the state can't step in and pay for valuable services the municipality can't afford. No, dear, we can't have that.
- Property tax circuit breaker
- This is slated to go up from a maximum of $250 per year to a whopping $300. Wow.
- Unfunded mandates
- This is actually a very good idea, but it's a little difficult to see how it's going to work as proposed. For example, the whole idea of public education is an unfunded (or only partially funded) mandate. Is the Senate simply proposing that the courts work this out for them?
The whole proposal smells like the same old same old: hashed over ideas aired by people who don't really have any idea what goes on in city halls and school departments. This can't possibly be the best the Senate can do.
14:25 - 21 Apr 2006 [/y6/ap]
Wed, 05 Apr 2006
A story in the New York Times outlines the effects of the Bush tax cuts on investment income a couple of years back.
(For those losing count of the tax cuts, this was a different round than the cuts on wages and other noninvestment income.)
Americans with annual incomes of $1 million or more, about one-tenth of 1 percent all taxpayers, reaped 43 percent of all the savings on investment taxes in 2003. The savings for these taxpayers averaged about $41,400 each.
This is from an analysis of 2003 tax data, so the savings will be much bigger for 2004 and 2005, since the stock market performed much better those years.
Remember, these are the people that our leading lights insist make up such a valuable part of our state that we need to cut their taxes.
13:20 - 05 Apr 2006 [/y6/ap]
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