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Tax Propositions on the November Ballot
From Issue: Volume XX - Number 21
10/19/2012
By Taylor Ramsey
As usual, there are propositions on the ballot for November that include state tax increases. Three to be exact. Proposition 30 establishes a temporary sales tax and increases personal income taxes for higher income earners. Proposition 38 is a tax on wage, business, investment and other income of individuals and families.
Proposition 39 restricts the way out-of-state businesses can report income with the intent to increase state revenues. It gets quite complicated, but if all three pass some of the provisions in one proposition will offset provisions in another. That is where doing your homework comes in.
Do you remember last year when Governor Brown was working on his budget and he discovered that California might have an unexpected spike of $6.6 billion in tax revenue? He immediately recommended increasing the spending levels of his budget by 5%, continued pushing for the bullet train and at the same time he proposed a temporary sales tax increase. How much of our income does government want?
California residents and businesses are one of the most taxed groups of citizens in the U.S. and democrats want more. He and his fellow democrats can’t keep themselves from spending.
Right now in the U.S. Congress the democrats are blaming the republicans for the oncoming increase in taxes on the middle class due to the Bush Tax Cuts that are expiring soon.
Democrats are accusing the republicans of not signing onto to the democrat’s proposed extension of the Bush Tax Cuts yet fail to explain that they have amended the plan.
In other words, democrats want to adjust the Bush Tax Cuts to increase taxes on the rich, but keep taxes the same for the rest of us. Could not the republicans blame the democrats for raising taxes on the middle class because they will not extend the Bush Tax Cuts with NO amendments? Yes!
I read an article on the Wall Street Journal Blog, “The Weekly Report” by Robert Frank, posted April 11, 2012, which seems to support what I have determined based on my research … raising taxes on the rich will do almost nothing to reduce the national debt.
Mr. Frank wrote; “An insightful reader post Megan McArdle’s blog on the Atlantic (magazine) uses IRS data to figure out how much money the government would raise by taxing certain wealth levels. He says a 45% rate on incomes of more than $1 million would generate $31 billion, while an even more progressive tax, with rates of 50%, 60%, 70% on incomes of $500,000, $5 million, and $10 million respectively would generate an added $133 billion. That is roughly 10% of the current annual budget. My point is just that I don’t see how deficits this large can be closed with income taxes on the rich, even at marginal rates far higher than anything we’ve seen in the post-1986 era.”
I agree we must keep them, but Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid must be modified so all of us can take advantage of them when the time comes. My hope is that people who are conservatives first and republicans second will continue to vote new representatives into office who know we must address our real debt sources no matter how much it hurts. Additionally, we must demand that our legislators at all levels of government distribute taxes collected properly. We cannot continue to compensate, through higher taxes, for our elected officials feeble attempt of allocating tax revenues.
We must vote against all tax increases. You can deny it, look the other way or say it ain’t so, but the fact is, spending is the root cause that the state of California and the U.S. government are broke. Taxpayers must cease being “enablers.”
taylor@longbeachcomber.com
www.lettertotheeditorblog.com
Twitter: @TaylorPRamsey
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