As news came in Thursday that tax receipts have come in more than $2 billion above revenue projections made by the Brown administration in January, legislative leaders struck a deal on the governor’s rainy day fund plan.
The AFL-CIO originally supported the tax but reversed course after a study determined that it would seriously undermine the state’s competitiveness as a business location, and some firms that had targeted the state as a relocation site said they would reconsider if the tax passed. The AFL-CIO, which helped collect signatures to put the measure on the ballot also balked when the teachers’ union got greedy and raised the proposed rate on the tax to 2 percent, up from 0.8 percent.
A CalPERS report intended for policymakers, noting that a reform cuts $435 a month from the pensions of many new hires, suggests that a pay raise may be needed to “compete for quality employees.”
What California should be doing is curing the disease by reforming the tax system, stabilizing it and ridding us of the volatility. Broaden the tax base and bank less on the rich, whose incomes fluctuate wildly during periods of boom and bust.
The revival of California’s economy and a rising housing market mean some hefty property tax increases for homeowners, the Legislature’s budget analyst believes.
Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed into law a 10-year exemption from state taxes for certain property used for space flight operations in California.
States’ unemployment insurance trust funds were battered by the Great Recession. Thanks to a spike in demand for jobless benefits, some went deep in debt to pay for help for the unemployed. Some still have billions left to repay.
The state began borrowing in 2009 and accounted for more than $10 billion of the debt at its peak, but it has declined only slightly – thanks to a political stalemate in the Capitol – and California now accounts for nearly half of the national debt total.
At a meeting last week of the Northern Nevada Development Authority in Carson City, Minden businessman Daniel Wray threatened to abandon plans to move the Southern California segment of his research and development business, Biofilm Management Inc., to Nevada.
A fairly constant refrain among California’s Democratic politicians and their liberal allies is that corporations should be paying more in taxes to support public services. . . There is, however, no consistency. The same folks who demand higher business taxes as a matter of supposed principle are often willing, even eager, to give certain industries and even certain corporations big tax breaks.
The University of California, Berkeley raised its out-of-state student enrollment target to 23 percent because it needs more money.
Contrary to the oft-repeated claim that high-income Californians pay an unfair amount of taxes, it is actually California’s low-income households who pay the largest share of their incomes in state and local taxes. Given widening income inequality over the last generation, and the ongoing economic challenges facing Californians in the aftermath of the Great Recession, policymakers could take specifi c steps to reduce the regressive nature of California’s system of state and local taxes and to promote economic security for low-income families.
For nearly two decades, the Tax Foundation has published an estimate of the combined state and local tax burden shouldered by the residents of each of the fifty states, regardless of the jurisdictions to which those taxes are paid. We argue that it is important to note that a taxpayer’s true tax burden must include the substantial taxes they pay directly or indirectly to out-of-state governments.
California’s tax revenues jumped by 18.2 percent in 2013, thanks to an improving economy and the impact of a temporary sales and income tax increase approved by voters, a new Census Bureau report shows.
Business owners who have fled California often say their decision to leave wasn’t just about tax rates, but about the punitive attitudes sometimes found among tax and regulatory authorities here. A new wrinkle in a high-profile, 22-year-old tax case gives fodder to those who make such claims.