Taxation
Rush pointed out today that while the hype was about stimulus dollars going to shovel ready jobs, much of the money went instead to budget deficits of states and municipalities, as evidenced in part by an unemployment rate in the construction industry of 22.7%. Never to be outdone in Rhode Island, we went them one…
A commenter to yesterday’s post on unemployment insurance appears to believe that I misunderstand the way the system works. He or she is wrong. The point is that the system is not able to address times of economic hardship. Since the federal government won’t allow the state to hold off repayment of the relevant loans…
Over at the FrumForum (a moderate Republican blog run by David Frum) Eli Lehrer explains: Many of the biggest budget items for states—Medicaid, bond payments, pension obligations to retirees—are virtually impossible to reduce. Big , broad-based tax increases, although difficult to avoid under many states’ balanced budget laws, will simply discourage investment and growth. Without…
Rhode Island is not alone in facing budget deficits as many other states (if not most) are in the same predicament. As a recent study by the Cato Institute shows, a lot of the deficit problems stem from generous public employee compensation packages. State and local governments face large budget deficits as revenues have stagnated…
It’s difficult to care — in the midst of a major recession, with unemployment at its current level and the state government in perpetual deficit — about political sniping about who told whom what when, but a statement in such an article begs for correction (emphasis added): RHODE ISLAND GOVERNMENT funnels one-third of its $3-billion…
Monique and Matt covered budgets and leadership on Wednesday night’s Matt Allen Show. Stream by clicking here, or download it.
From AP writer Ray Henry’s
Mark Perry observes (with charts) a progressive trend in American taxation: The Tax Foundation reported last week that more than 143 million individual income tax returns were filed in 2007, and 46.6 million of those returns had a zero or negative tax liability, setting a new record for the number of “non-payers.” This group represented…
URI Economic Professor Edward Mazze’s tax-cutting suggestions sound reasonable enough, but one can’t help but be suspicious of the urge to control: Murphy said of Mazze’s plan, “I want to be open to it.” Murphy said he was particularly interested in Mazze’s proposal geared toward revitalizing local downtown business districts. Murphy said he remembers a…
So, Governor Carcieri and his Director of the Department of Revenue, Gary Sasse, have switched from a “gross receipts tax,” which would essentially be an expanded and hidden sales tax, to a “net receipts tax,” which Providence Journal reporter Neil Downing describes as follows: Under a net receipts tax, a corporation generally would pay tax…