Tag Archives: taxes

A Tale of Two States

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A Wall Street Journal editorial provided the comparison.

Since 2010

  • New York’s population has grown from a skosh under 19.4 million to a skosh over 19.4 million
  • Florida’s population has grown from 18.8 million to 21.5 million
  • New York’s spending has increased by $43 billion—about $570,000 for each additional person
  • Florida’s spending has increased by $28 billion—a $10,400 increase per new resident
  • New York’s spending on worker retirement benefits has nearly doubled
  • Florida’s spending on worker retirement benefits has grown by one-sixth of that
  • New York’s Medicaid consumes 40% of the state budget—twice as much as education
  • Florida spends about the same on schools as on Medicaid—and has an older population—retirees don’t flock north to New York
  • Florida’s private job growth has been about 60% higher than in New York
  • Florida’s finance job growth has been 25%
  • New York’s finance job growth has been 9.7%—and New York is supposed to be our financial city

Currently,

  • New York’s 2021 budget was for $177 billion
  • Florida’s 2021 budget (albeit not yet signed by the governor) is for $93 billion
  • New York’s spending is 35.9% Federal (taxpayer nation-wide) dollars—$63.5 billion
  • Florida’s spending is 32.8% Federal dollars—$30.5 billion

And after all this, New York still is demanding more Federal dollars—$61 billion worth—not just from the good citizens of Florida, but from the good citizens of all of the other States in these United States.

There’s one more difference between the two States: one is run by Progressive-Democrats, the other by Republicans. You know which is which.

Aside: both States use Federal dollars—the dollars of taxpayers from all the other States as well as those two—for enormous portions of their budgets. It’s time to do away with Federal transfers of taxpayer dollars from one State to another, except in time of declared regional or national emergency. Leave all those transfers in the originating States for their own use.

A Taxing Error

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The European Union is making one. Again.

Of the EU-27, France, Poland, and Denmark have so far proposed barring companies that are based, or have subsidiaries, in tax havens from receiving coronavirus-linked bailouts. Italy may soon join them after Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio added his voice to calls to tackle tax havens.
Meanwhile, the European Commission confirmed on April 24 that its existing rules allow individual EU countries to block coronavirus aid from going to companies based in tax havens.

Whether such companies should be eligible for Wuhan Virus-related bailouts is a separate question. Whether there should be Wuhan Virus-related bailouts at all is yet another separate question.

What’s of particular interest to me is this claim by so-called “tax experts:”

[S]uch national measures could help boost transparency and moves toward a level playing field in global corporate taxation.

It’s inconceivable to these folks that another way to achieve a level playing field in global corporate taxation is for high-tax nations to lower their tax rates rather than trying to compel low-tax nations—those putative tax havens—to raise their own tax rates.

After all, these personages, seem to insist, competition is all well and good, except when it’s inconvenient to Government. The convenience, the outright benefits, to the citizenry of competitive outcomes—lower prices, better quality products, a broader array of them—is immaterial to these personages. As is leaving more money in the hands of those unwashed citizens by inflicting lower tax rates on them.

Export Incentives Coupled with Domestic Disincentives

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The People’s Republic of China has moved to shut down the domestic marketing of wild animals on fears [wild animal traders’] goods sparked the coronavirus pandemic. This is a seeming response to growing international pressure on the PRC to cut that out for that reason.

[The People’s Republic of] China’s National People’s Congress on February 24 imposed a ban on the sale and consumption of wild animals in the country.

However.

Less than a month later, [The People’s Republic of] China’s Ministry of Finance and tax authority said on March 17 they would raise value-added tax rebates on nearly 1,500 Chinese products, including offering a 9% rebate on the export of animal products such as edible snakes and turtles, primate meat, beaver and civet musk, and rhino horns….

As the Congressional Research Service, cited in the article at the link, mentioned, the export move

could spread the risk to global markets[.]

You think?

The CRS’ report further noted,

Absent in [The People’s Republic of] China’s policy push are incentives to encourage the sale of pharmaceuticals, PPE, and other medical products overseas[.]

Hmm. Makes me wonder just what the PRC is up to, really.

 

The CRS’ report can be read here.

Tariff Relief

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Several US companies are saying that the existing tariff regime that’s applied to imports from the People’s Republic of China is hurting imports of chemicals necessary for the manufacture of disinfectants and sanitizers. Accordingly, medical supply companies and other businesses have filed dozens of applications for tariff relief/exception related to those imports.

If such relief is granted to an importing company, it should be contingent on that company acting expeditiously to move its supply chain out of the PRC. The move also must include non-PRC suppliers that import their own component supplies from the PRC. “Expeditiously” should be explicitly defined in the relief document as a time frame or a production milestone, and the relief should automatically expire if that deadline/milestone isn’t met.

Tariff relief should be granted to all Wuhan Virus-related imports from the PRC, with the same “expeditious” criterion attached, and existing relief should be modified to include the criterion.

Paying Their Fair Share

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Progressive-Democrats, including their Presidential candidates, are fond of saying the Evil Rich aren’t paying their fair share in taxes; they should pay more.  Those same Progressive-Democrats also carefully decline to say what that fair share should be, other than their “more.”

Here’s a graph of what those Evil Rich do pay, compared with the income those same Evil Rich earn, courtesy of the Center of the American Experiment:

Notice that. That’s even after those Evil Rich have taken all the adjustments to their top line income that our tax code allows them to take, including the Progressive-Democrats’ much disliked preferential tax treatment for capital gains and interest income.

The graph shows the rates for the top 50%.  The top 10% pays a skosh over 70% of all income taxes paid Uncle Sugar, while earning only a bit under 48% of the private sector’s income.

Ninety per cent, seventy per cent—in what way are these not the Evil Rich’s fair share, much less more than their fair share?  Especially compared to those bottom 50% who earn a bit over 10% of the private sector’s income, but pay only 3%?

The Progressive-Democrats won’t say. The only conclusion is that they consider the fair share to be “all of it.”