Tag Archives: politics

SALT Tax

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Short, brief, sweet, and redundant.

One thing threatening serious tax reform—which is to say making permanent the tax rate reductions that otherwise expire near the end of this year, reducing those rates further, and flattening the rates further—is the kerfuffle over the SALT (State And Local Tax) tax deduction cap, currently at $10,000.

I sympathize with the Representatives and Senators, especially the Republican ones, in those States most impacted by the cap. Their wealthier constituents want the cap raised significantly if not eliminated. These politicians, though, must understand that as members of our national Congress, their responsibilities to our nation as a whole runs a very close second to their responsibilities to those individual constituencies.

The business of cap raising/eliminating is nonsense for a couple of reasons. One is that there is no reason at all for the rest of us taxpayers to subsidize those in States with profligate spending and already high taxes. Those Congressmen would do better using their Federal influence and bully pulpit to convince their State and local governments to mend their spendthrift ways and lower their tax rates—the latter which several States (tellingly, mostly Republican led) already have done or are doing.

The other reason is that, aside from empirical evidence that lowering tax rates actually increases revenues to the Federal government from the increased private economic activity that results from more money being left in the hands of us private citizens, revenue reductions—if any—from lowered tax rates is easily covered by reduced spending in general and reduced, if not eliminated, subsidies and tax credits for “green” energy solar and windmill farms, battery cars, federal deductions for non-federal tax collections, and other such tax engineering froo-froo.

Indeed, with sufficiently reduced spending, badly needed increased spending on national defense still could occur.

Raising the SALT tax cap wouldn’t be tax reform, it would be tax deform. In fact, reform here would be eliminating the SALT deduction altogether.

End Congressional Oversight of the District of Columbia?

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Washington, DC, delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) wants an end to Congressional oversight of the District of Columbia, and she’s moving to revive earlier legislation that would to do so.

The congressional review period for DC bills is onerous for the District, and rarely even used by Congress, causing DC bills to be unnecessarily ensnared in congressional bureaucracy for months[.]

It’s already the case, though, that the oversight is so rarely used—only twice in the last 30 years has Congress moved to overrule a DC-passed ordinance—that the district already is, functionally, self-ruling.

However.

The move, even were it a good idea, would require an Amendment to our Constitution. Here’s Art I, Sect 8 on governance of the District of Columbia:

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings

Holmes has a beef, in that there are too many bureaucrats involved, and it is much to slow to get anything done. Those 60 days to review an ordinance proposal are patently excessive, especially in this day of computers and Congressional staffs so bloated that staffers are scratching for things to do. I’ll go out on a limb: it shouldn’t take more than a week (Sundays excepted) to do the review and either approve or reject the ordinance.

Those interferences, those delays, badly want reduction.

An Independent Greenland’s Budget

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Amid President-elect Donald Trump’s (R) rhetoric regarding buying Greenland from Denmark, there is concern in Greenland about that, but maybe not so much. Greenland already is a largely self-governing island within the Kingdom of Denmark. Greenland already has been pushing for independence, and the Danish government, along with its monarch, is open to considering that, given sufficient interest in independence on the part of Greenlanders.

Greenlanders strongly want independence, they don’t want to be part of the US, but they are highly interested in a closer relationship with us than is politically possible as long as they’re part of the Kingdom—another factor underlying their push for outright independence.

One concern about independence is that with independence, the annual $600 million in transfers from Denmark to Greenland, roughly half the current Greenlandic budget, would stop. What to do about that?

Greenland is rich in a broad variety of natural resources, from oil and natural gas to rare earth minerals to graphite to uranium to precious stones, and on and on. These resources remain largely untapped. The fishing waters around Greenland and in what would become an independent Greenland’s Exclusive Economic Zone also are rich.

Extraction royalties from mining those land based natural resources would easily fill the budget gap, and more. Alaska has been paying dividends to its citizens for nearly 50 years just from oil and natural gas extraction. Texas charges a severance tax—its extraction royalty—on natural gas, oil, and condensate (a byproduct of natural gas production with its own commercial value) production. That tax covers a significant fraction of Texas’ annual budget. With proper (Greenlandic) management the fisheries (and undersea minerals) in Greenland’s EEZ would become another source of national revenue.

Greenland’s budget would more than make up for the loss of Denmark transfers with its own extraction royalties and exploitation fees—which needn’t be all that high to put the nation’s budget well into the black. A trade arrangement with the US that addressed all, or even most, of that would be highly beneficial to both nations.

Beyond that, the US is highly concerned about Russia’s and People’s Republic of China’s moves in the region and in the polar seas and so is interested in expanding existing bases and adding more. Basing rights could come with fees for Greenland, also.

A freely negotiated trade and basing arrangement with an independent Greenland would be a winning arrangement all around. That also would be more revenue positive for us than taking on Greenland as a territory, or even a protectorate.

What’s the Value?

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Cities in the People’s Republic of China are running out of cash while their debts, already vastly excessive, are rapidly growing.

What to do?

In August, a gas supplier [Xinjiang East Universe Gas] in China’s far western Xinjiang region struck a solution to settle $25 million [¥183.3 million] of overdue gas bills racked up by a few state-owned entities in Changji city. Instead of cash, the gas supplier will effectively take over 260 unfinished apartments in a French-themed residential compound being developed by its clients.

That’s become the go-to technique for city governments to welch on settle their debts.

Starting last year, Monalisa Group, a Guangdong-based ceramic tiles manufacturer, accepted apartments as payment instead of cash from its real-estate clients. By September, it had accumulated $19 million [¥139.3 million] worth of investment properties on its balance sheet.
…
More recently in June, Shanghai Urban Architecture Design proposed to take over 115 apartments from developer Greenland Holdings—a Fortune 500 company that defaulted on its bonds in 2023—to settle some $10 million [¥73.3 million] of debts. In December, Sunfly Intelligent Technology, a producer of LED lighting and other electrical equipment, settled $50 million [¥366.6 million] of debts with a group of developers including Country.
In the past three months, three unusual debtors emerged—the county-level police departments in China’s poor, mountainous Guizhou province.

The PRC already has accumulated as many as 90 million empty housing units, units still unsold after all this time.

For companies like Xinjiang East Universe that provide services to China’s cash-strapped local governments, getting half-built apartments “is better than getting nothing[.]”

But only if those structures actually get sold. These unsold apartments are unsold for a reason. How does using them to pay debts make their creditors whole? All the move does is unload the borrower’s white elephant onto the creditor, leaving the creditor still out in the cold with no functional, practical repayment.

White elephants, indeed: most of those apartment structures aren’t even completely built. It’ll cost those creditors additional money to finish them and make them habitable. With that glut of finished housing units already clogging the market, peddling these for less than anything like what might pass for market rates, a depressed price necessary to get them sold, or even rented, will only further depress the PRC’s housing market.

That’s not good for an economy where so much private wealth—family wealth—already is tied up in real estate from the housing boom of a few years before the Wuhan Virus Situation. Residential property represents some 25%-30% of the PRC’s GDP.

There is a Parallel

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Virginia Republican legislators are looking at updating and tightening Virginia law regarding fentanyl deaths.

Under current case law, it is difficult to charge a drug dealer with the murder of a user who died from fentanyl they had purchased unless they are in the proximity of that dealer, according to GOP legislators.

Thus:

State Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, R-New Kent, told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that Virginia hopes to address that legislative insufficiency.
“This [new] [law] would say if you sell the drugs, it doesn’t matter if you’re in physical proximity,” he said.

When a person is killed in the course of a crime of which he’s a victim or bystander, all of the participants in that crime are as guilty of murder as is the one who did the actual killing. This is well established case law.

It’s eminently sensible that participants in a drug activity (and not just involving fentanyl) during the course of which or as a result of which a person is killed by the drug should all be guilty of the murder as is the individual who was proximately involved in that killing. Bullets and knives have, in the main, pretty prompt effects from having been delivered in the moment. Drugs, though, have prompt effects when taken, the taking often is delayed. Hence the need to expand that proximity to the dealer bit. The drugs the dealer delivered might well have their prompt effect later, when the addict takes the metaphorical bullet/knife stab.

Unfortunately, though, this law has little chance of passage in the current Virginia legislative session: the Progressive-Democratic Party will hold a one-seat majority after a pair of special elections are completed. Party has shown over the last four years that it has no stomach for punishing criminals, lacking even the stomach to hold them in jail pending trial, or even to bring them to trial at all.