Category: Taxes

Senate Passes Big Corporate Giveaway: Feingold Yes; Kohl “Present”

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Tax law sausage making for the donor class. Wouldn’t we all like a 5.25% tax rate! Jonathan Weisman takes a look:

The Senate gave final approval today to the most significant corporate tax legislation in nearly 20 years, sending President Bush a sprawling, 650-page measure that closes egregious tax loopholes, reduces taxes for domestic producers and doles out scores of tax breaks for interests ranging from tackle box makers to Native Alaskan whaling captains.
The Senate vote of 69 to 17, taken in a rare holiday session, belied the acrimony underlying the measure, which includes almost $140 billion in tax breaks over 10 years, offset by loophole closures and other revenue raisers. The House passed it Thursday night by a similarly comfortable margin, 280 to 141, and Bush is expected to sign it into law.

HR 4520 Roll Call Vote
I frankly am amazed that Senator Feingold voted for this. Senator Kohl took an interesting path voting present (?)….. Politics. Send your comments to campaign@russfeingold.org or Senator Kohl
Interestingly and appropriately, Tammy Baldwin voted against this bill.
All the web | Clusty | Google | Teoma | Yahoo | David Welna Audio

Interesting Spin on City Tax Hike….

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Judith Davidoff:

City taxes on an average house in Madison would increase $82 under Mayor Dave Cieslewicz’s proposed 2005 executive budget.
That means the owner of an average $205,359 home would contribute about $1,597 to city operations, exclusive of county, MATC or school taxes.
Overall spending under Cieslewicz’s budget would increase 3.6 percent, though the property tax levy is going up 5.4 percent.
Brasser said that was due to the reductions in state aids and other revenue sources, as well as having less in reserves to plug the budget hole.
Last year the city had $4.7 million in reserves from the mayor’s hiring freeze.
“When all other revenue sources don’t keep pace with the inflation in our expenditures, the property tax is what has to make up the difference,” Brasser said.

Ideally, this article would include some history – spending and tax increases over the past decade vis a vis population growth, inflation and city employment, among others. If find this obfuscation disingenuous….
If you have views on this, send them to mayor@cityofmadison.com (keep in mind that our total property tax increase will include school and county increases as well).
UPDATE: Dean Mosiman summarizes the Mayor’s tax increase plans.

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Wisconsin: Squeezing the taxpayer….

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Steven Walters summarizes a variety of viewpoints on the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute’s recent study on state government spending (7.7% above the national average). The real crunch (and why the spending battles continue at the local and state level): Wisconsin’s income is 2.8% below the national average. [75K PDF]
This problem will not improve until our economy is increasingly based on high growth, valued added businesses. Wisconsin’s above average government spending was supported for decades by the state’s now declining manufacturing base. This change, which will take many years, requires an open mind, a willingness to avoid coddling and subsidizing declining industries, rethinking government spending (consolidating services and making sure the services we provide make sense in the 21st century) and doing everything we can to encourage business formation. It also requires economic and political leadership, which is, in my view, is generally lacking. (see this national example where the NAB has successfully kept public spectrum for TV stations). Note that TV viewer numbers are declining…..
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett’s latest budget caps the property tax increase @ 2%

Banks & State Taxes

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Paul Gores:

Twenty-six banks have agreed to pay a total of $23 million in back taxes stemming from their use of Nevada tax shelters, and state tax officials said more settlements are imminent.
The back-tax total announced Monday was the first released by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue since it began a crackdown this year on the practice by many banks of shifting some of their income-earning assets, such as loans and bonds, to subsidiaries in Nevada.

This doesn’t seem like a whole lot of money given the size of the banks, perhaps it’s more of a PR deal.

Tommy Thompson, Bud Selig & The Brewers, Still Sticking it to the Taxpayers

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Don Walker on the $8M repairs needed for Miller Park’s 3.5 year old roof. We should not forget Tommy Thompson’s infamous quote: (made in reference to an excise tax to help finance the Brewers’ new stadium) Let Milwaukee and nearby counties pay for it, not his northern constituents. “Stick it to ’em.” And he did. Shepherd Express | Wispolitics
This article by Steve Fainaru (created not in Wisconsin, but in Washington, DC) tells the story.

Using the Tax Code to Fix Health Care

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Interesting ideas, certainly worth discussion:

We propose a simple change that will fundamentally alter the way people buy health care. All individually purchased insurance and out-of-pocket expenses would become tax deductible for persons who have at least catastrophic insurance coverage. The tax deduction could be taken by persons who claim the standard deduction on their tax returns and those who itemize deductions. All purchases of health care would receive the same income tax treatment.
With a level playing field, workers will no longer have a tax incentive to take their compensation in the form of expensive health insurance with low copayments and will shift to health plans with higher deductibles and higher coinsurance rates. Market forces will ensure that the insurance premium savings will be passed on to workers in the form of higher money wages. Just as workers have borne the burden of rising health care costs, so will they reap the benefits when costs are brought under control.

Dark Age Ahead?

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Jane Jacobs has published Dark Age Ahead (Random House, 2004), in which she targets “five crucial weaknnesses in the foundation of contemporary life in the West” — one of which is “dumbed down taxes.”
Author, activitist, social theorist and renowned urban planner, Jane Jacobs defined an increasingly influential way of looking at cities by opposing “slum” clearance and “suburban sprawl,” and advocating the “restoration” of urban centers. Still in print 40-plus years after publication, her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) revolutionized urban planning.
Jacob’s later works explored her fundament ideas for different perspectives: urban economics in The Economy of Cities (1969) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984), and political philosophy in Systems of Survival (1992). More recently Ms. Jacobs argued that economic life obeys the same rules as those governing the systems in nature in The Nature of Economies (2000).
About her latest work, Publisher’s Weekly wrote “Witty, beautifully written–the culmination of Jacobs’ previous thinking, and a step forward that deftly invokes a broader philosophical, even metaphysical, context.” Via Taxprof.