New York State Budget Relies On Entertainment Tax 655
einer writes "Facing a budget shortfall, New York State Governor David Paterson crafts a budget that taxes iPod music downloads and other 'digitally delivered entertainment services.' On the chopping block is $700 million in school aid and $3.5 billion in health care subsidies."
Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid (Score:4, Informative)
Did you forget that an entire state is attached to that hole they call New York City? Some of us live in the middle of the state...with NY State already taxing Amazon purchases, the drop of education money and the 18% tax on non diet soda, I have a feeling NY doesn't want people living here anymore. :(
Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid (Score:5, Interesting)
They'll be losing me next year! Honestly, why do people stay in this high-tax state? I lived in PA before and the state took 3% income tax. That's an ADJACENT STATE! NY takes 7%, for reference... New Jersey has this radically progressive tax schedule where the poor pay 8x less than the rich, so it's difficult to compare with New York.
To be fair, sales tax is lower by 2%. Of course I live in the city, so pay an additional 3 or 4% income tax and 4% sales tax - but the situation was similar in Philly.
Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder why these politicians (New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland - they are all in trouble) never had the idea to "lay off 75% of the government staff who are doing nothing but surfing the net" and "cut spending"?
It's as if the don't know how to do what every American family does every day - pinch pennies & cut spending.
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It's as if the don't know how to do what every American family does every day - pinch pennies & cut spending.
Paterson is trying to do that. I commend him for his efforts even though I work for a health care facility that receives >90% of our funding from Albany. We could be in for some hard times if the cuts are aimed at OMH. But I don't care -- New York State has ignored fiscal reality for far too long and it's time to rein in spending.
Whether or not the legislature actually goes along with it is a different matter altogether. I foresee another late budget and a lot of fighting in Albany in the months ahea
Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid (Score:5, Interesting)
Newegg.com started doing it too, but two months later they sent an email to NT residents that stated (in a nutshell), "We looked at the law with our lawyers and there is no way NY could ever win this. They'd be stupid to take it to court. Therefore, we're going to stop taxing NY customers again."
Somebody has to take this law to court. The problem is, no one has the balls to.
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And Amazon or some other online retailer will have to be the ones to do it.
While it is fun to imagine powerful corporations ratifying our collective will as directed by their testosterone level, for them it will come down to a simple business decision. If the impact of complying with the law (or the risk of not) is greater than the cost to litigate it, they'll litigate it. Imagining any other motivation for a business is self deceit.
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Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid (Score:5, Funny)
Well they're not taxing mine. If I'm forced to collect the 7% sales tax through some automated system, I will, but then I'll refund it directly back to the NY customer. And I will NOT be filing any kind of tax form with New York.
New York is welcome to send the police to Southern Pennsylvania to try to arrest me. Good luck with that. The PA Militia (read: rifle-toting rednecks) and PA National Guard does not take kindly to foreign invaders, so I'm think I'm relatively safe.
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NYC sucks down more dollars than any other city.
Businesses rarely buy the buildings in New York City - they are usually given gratis while the New York State taxpayers shoulder the burden.
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This is the REAL conflict in America.
It isn't Republicans versus Democrats. It's city versus countryside, and it's been going on since 1989. Most people in the country (and suburbs) want minimal taxation and government to "butt out" of their affairs. Meanwhile city folk what free handouts like subways, hospitals, new baseball stadiums - they want to be treated like children being cared for by daddy government.
Country - independent
City - dependent
That's what almost all politics in America boils down to.
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First, sales tax is assessed based on delivery address, not billing address. This may be hard for NY to deal with, since online delivery means they'll need to map IP address (or customer account) to physical address.
Second, by doing that, you're committing tax evasion. You are responsible for use tax on those items you use that are taxable where you use them, but you bought them where they were untaxed, or taxed at a lower rate. Sure, this is often overlooked, and states (and
Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid (Score:4, Insightful)
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Apparently not. Part of my tax money is used to kill babies, but I still have to pay it. I'm sure that tax money is used for a lot of things that we disagree with, but we are still required to pay them.
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Or you could just buy some itunes giftcards which have song credits.
Re:Easy Remedy for Those Looking to Avoid (Score:4, Insightful)
Since there is no tax on the purchases now and this would require new legislation so the tax could be any amount. Your $.99 download could be taxed $.51 suddenly making your songs cost $1.50 each and erasing almost any hope you'll buy online.
The thing that bothers me most about the inflammatory language used by the politicians regarding the urgency of the issue and the hot-button programs they say they have to cut to make the budget balance. In my home town of Mesa, AZ the idiot mayor and most of council were saying the budget was a mess, all these bonds were coming due, roads needed fixing and we had to close the libraries and lay off lots of police and fire personnel to balance the budget. One council member was level headed and came up with a budget that balanced the budget (or nearly so) and only cut non-essential services such as after school art programs and the funny one... slicing the monthly cell phone stipend for the council members from $3,000 to $500, over $200K in savings for the year. The council voted strongly against the centrist, level headed plan and the alarmist budget went to a public vote. Since this was all televised as a "town meeting" and many people saw that there was no 'need' to cut police and library personnel the majority budget was soundly defeated.
To this day I think the mayor and council sill get an obscene allowance for cell phone and car usage.
The biggest idiocy was that most of the council claimed the city didn't know the bonds from 14 years ago were coming due. How stupid or willfully ignorant do you have to be to not know that your budget needs to account for several million dollars of debt service?
Sleazy (Score:5, Insightful)
On the positive side (Score:3, Informative)
Well, on the up side he's trying to raise more money through products rather than income taxes. I'd prefer the taxes on ipods, cigars, gasoline, and luxury cars to income tax increases. Of course if it hurts NY businesses (I don't think it will), then it'll hurt in the long run. But the state needs to stop bleeding money immediately.
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Why not use income taxes for services that apply to everyone like education and health?
I agree that other things like road maintenance should be taxed on products like gas.
I am Canadian so taxing the income is just normal to me.
Re:On the positive side (Score:5, Insightful)
bleeding money. Interesting. Let's say you had a gaping leg wound that was bleeding, well, blood. For this analogy, assume you're a hemophiliac and the bleeding won't stop on it's own accord. Would you get some blood packs and inject them into your arm? No, you'd stop the bleeding (and inject blood if needed). Raising taxes doesn't stop the bleeding; cutting spending does.
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So this isn't an overall spending decrease, but a spending "deceleration". Put another way, it's not a step in the right direction, but it's a smaller step in the wrong direction than usual.
I disagree.
Thanks to inflation, you have to spend 3% more this year than last year to buy the same stuff. A 1% total spending increase (not corrected for inflation) actually represents a net reduction in the amount of goods/services purchased.
Besides to carry the bleeding wound metaphor... taking a gushing wound and redu
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I do. It reduces medical insurance costs for everyone in the long run, gains the state money, and is easy enough to avoid - just drink diet.
Of course, I'm diabetic so I've been drinking diet soda only for over a decade.
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It reduces medical insurance costs for everyone in the long run...
So you support taxing anything which might cause higher medical costs for the insured, in order to discourage its use? Why not just ban it outright?
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You can't drink water or juice? You're actually claiming that you are forced to drink regular soda. You somehow suffer without it. Seriously?
Re:On the positive side (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't drink water or juice? You're actually claiming that you are forced to drink regular soda. You somehow suffer without it. Seriously?
Yes, seriously.
Pick something that you consume a lot more of than the majority of the population (high-speed internet...we'll tax you on each byte transferred, etc.), and replace that with "regular soda" in your argument.
Once enough people stop drinking sugared beverages, then the government will have to put a tax on the "diet" ones to make up for the tax shortfall. Taxing non-diet soda is just another "what 'for the good of the children/fat people/whatever' reason can we use to get more tax money?" plan.
Basically, you try to convince all the people who "won't be impacted by the tax" to vote for it (or to vote for the representatives who implemented it). Then, you can get all the people impacted by this tax to vote for the "diet soda tax", because it will even things out.
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I drink water from a tap, what's wrong with that, other than it doesn't support the bottled water companies, the plastics companies, the oil companies and the disposal companies?
Tap water in most of the U.S. is at least as safe to drink as bottled water, and is several thousand times cheaper, and doesn't leave as much of an environmental footprint.
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Sooo... You didn't just notice the glaring HOLE in your own statement there?
Allow me to quote it for you:
How is the state going to gain money if it's so easy to avoid? You see, taxes like this idiotic one ALWAYS neglect to take into account the resulting human response to the new tax. People will simply drink less sugary soda and more diet, or will drink iced teas and juices. In the end, the "Obesity" tax will do NOTHING to stop obesity, and will collect
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Re:On the positive side (Score:4, Insightful)
I do. It reduces medical insurance costs for everyone in the long run
Except the governor is also proposing a tax increase on health insurance too (plus auto insurance, homeowners insurance, etc). Let's drive more people off of private insurance! That'll solve all of our problems.
NY is second in per capita expenditures in the country and nearly double that of California. I've watched the state rot around me for the past 30 years. NYC was relatively immune to it since it is the financial capital of the US, but the other 95% of the state has long suffered under these types of policies. Upstate and Western NY have had a fleeing population, increasing welfare rolls and businesses looking to relocate for decades because of our wasteful spending and burdensome taxation and regulation.
Squeezing even further will just force more activity out of the state, even if people choose to still live here. Fireworks are illegal in NY, but as soon as you cross the border to PA on 15, you'll see the fireworks store. Every summer, you see hundreds of people in my tiny town setting off fireworks. Just how do you think they got them? Almost all of the population of NY is within a 2 hour drive to another state. Buy stuff in sufficient quantities and it becomes worth it to make a trip, especially if you're already going to visit friends and family in adjacent states. The suckers dumb enough to keep buying in NY will pay the extra tax and the rest of us will be boosting the economies of PA, NJ, VT, CT, etc instead of our home state.
NY needs to cut some of the sacred cows... plain and simple. That's the only way of resolving the crisis.
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And diet pop is so good for you. Really, you're not saving any medical costs by promoting diet pop. The effects aren't as directly obvious as HFC pops (yet) but they are there and they do cost the insurance system money.
Cane sugar pop is much better for you (plural you, not singular you) in the long run than any of the diet pops (at least until the FDA stops propping up the corn and sugar industries by acknowledging natural no-to-low calorie sweeteners like Stevia).
Cane sugar pop is still a niche product an
Re:On the positive side (Score:5, Insightful)
We have socialized healthcare - Medicare - which pays a huge chunk of our hospital bills. That's why some American politicians get the "bright" idea to tax hamburgers to discourage bad health risks & lower Medicare costs.
Me, I prefer Thomas Jefferson's view:
(updated to the modern age): "Whether my neighbor eats one hamburger, many hamburgers, or no hamburgers, matters not to me. His actions do not harm my body, my property, nor my rights, so I will allow my neighbor to eat or not eat as many burgers as he pleases." - That is the true meaning of individual liberty. Do whatever you damn well please, and respect others' rights to do the same, so long as they do not harm your body, property, or rights.
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State funds are our property. If those funds are spent on health care, and your neighbor does things which burden the health care system more than others, than he is doing harm to your property by effectively taking it from you.
Re:On the positive side (Score:4, Funny)
>>>State funds are our property. If those funds are spent on health care, and your neighbor does things which burden the health care system more than others, than he is doing harm to your property by effectively taking it from you.
Yes that's true. And you have a right to deny your fat neighbor the "charity" of free healthcare.
You do NOT have the right to take away his freedom of religion.... er, to eat as many burgers as he wants. Your neighbor is not your slave to control and dictate what he can or can not eat.
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How much does the state spend on health care, including state employee health plans, public hospitals, etc.? And how much of that could be reduced if people didn't consume extremely unhealthy and needless things like soda?
When the state is in economic crisis and can't pay the bills, yeah, I'm all for this kind of tax. When the budget is balanced and the economy is stronger, then I'm not as much for it.
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I stopped that fight a long time ago. Sin taxes are here to stay, since they work for the people who wish to control the behavior of others. First alcohol, then cigarettes, now freaking sugar. As if having a bunch of saccharine coursing through your veins is healthy.
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Sales tax discourages consumption, and instead encourages saving money.
Yeah it has that effect, but only for the people who have money to save in the first place. A sales tax is usually considered regressive because the poor spend a higher percentage of their income than the rich. If the sales tax were 10%, and I make $20,000 a year, and spend all of it, I pay 10% of my income in taxes. If you make $200,000 a year, but only spend half of it on taxable items. The rest goes to investments, and savings. You only pay 5% in taxes. It doesn't seem quite fair.
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The Feds tried that a few years ago. They slapped a luxury tax on yachts.
The luxury tax did not bring in a single penny of tax revenues. The people who would have paid it noticed that the price on domestic yacht purchases had gone up. Some of them postponed or cancelled their planned purchases. Others went out of jurisdiction, and bought abroad.
The resulting downturn in domestic yacht purchases did, however, put quite a few boatyards out of business, and cause marinas to lay people off, putting those em
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With a net loss in tax revenue.
Issues (Score:4, Insightful)
Rather than arguing for or against taxing non-tangible products, let me says this...
How is New York's tax system done? Isn't it income tax, property tax, and some sort of sales tax?
They have a sales tax, right? They're just extending it to non-tangible goods. How is downloaded music any different from buying a CD, in regards to taxes? Why shouldn't it be taxed?
Taxi rides, movie tickets, cable and satellite TV, seem like a bad idea to be taxed. Taxi rides are a big part in living in the city, right? Movie tickets are expensive enough already, right? And, well, cable and satellite TV, what effect will that have on people voting for him next time around?
Re:Issues and Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more than that. Now Apple (although probably not Amazon since they maintain they have no presence in NY) will have to collect a special tax strictly for NY residents, and pay that tax regularly to the state, and maybe file additional reports at additional expense, and no longer have the nicely uniform 99 cents/download price/image - and that's the effect on just one company alone. Multiply this by every company affected in every new area and the burden is significant.
Of course NY prides itself on being a very liberal state, and Joe Biden has said that paying taxes is a civil duty. Maybe they'll like having this happen to them. If not they can always vote some new people in - oh wait! The election is already over and you're stuck with these clowns for at least the next 2 years.
(If you say why Apple? It's because there are Apple computer stores in NYC giving the state tax people something to get their claws into.)
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Of course NYC prides itself on being a very liberal state, and Joe Biden has said that paying taxes is a civil duty.
Fixed that for ya. Talk to anyone outside the NYC area and they'll agree that taxes are way too high. The worst part is that local tax monies are sucked up and re-distributed to NYC.
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Cell phone companies have had to deal with special local taxes for years. Any company that delivers products and has to collect sales tax has to deal with differences in local sales tax.
The tax system in the US seems to be more about subterfuge and camouflage than any sound fiscal policy.
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How is downloaded music any different from buying a CD, in regards to taxes?
It brings up issues of jurisdiction. If Apple's servers are in CA and the payment is processed in CA, and Apple's facilities are in CA, then how can NY tax them? It's similar to mail-order tax issues.
By the way, I know this is theoretical, since Apple in fact has stores in NY. NY probably has every legal right to tax AAC downloads from Apple.
I'm in favor of the Apt Tax (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.apttax.com/ [apttax.com]
That is all. Oh, and it's time for all government to tighten its fat belt.
Re:I'm in favor of the Apt Tax (Score:5, Funny)
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That's not bad. And it would be heavily progressive - if not because poor people make fewer transactions, then because most poor people are going to demand cash if it saves them 0.5%.
My "unintended consequences" spidey sense is tingling, though...
A government in its death throes (Score:5, Insightful)
Cut the Military to 1/4 of it's current budget. (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep the health care budget intact, but close the bases and scale everything down. This will reduce the need to Federal Income Tax revenue.
Then, let NY keep more than $0.66 of every dollar it contributes in Federal taxes.
We need to cut costs, but at the top where the rich benefit from gov't spending the most.
Re:Cut the Military to 1/4 of it's current budget. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A government in its death throes (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the state is collapsing under a sudden, dramatic downturn in tax revenues because Wall Street firms are losing money all of sudden. Quoth TFA:
Apparently the state of New York didn't build up any cash reserves/pay off debts when times were good.
I don't see where regulation comes into it. It's not that I expect you to RTFA or anything, but it sure sounds like you're jumping to conclusions to fit your pet theory.
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Increased regulation causing the State budget shortfalls? How is making decisions on tax rates regulation?
How is increasing taxes on certain transactions not regulation?
You might also want to read up on a certain Mr. Madoff, who took full advantage of a regulatory vacuum.
You mean the Bernard Madoff whose niece is a lawyer for his firm, and is married to an SEC investigator who has ignored complaints from private groups since 1999? The solution is not increased regulation, because increased government control violates individual rights and leads to increased opportunity for corruption (e.g. Madoff). The solution is competing private companies that demand transparency in exchange for their "seal of approval". You
Less Government for Less Money (Score:5, Insightful)
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Policemen and firemen take up much more money in salaries and guaranteed retirement benefits than politicians, if only because there are so many more of the former group. Also, the result of cutting politicians' pay would be to make it so that only the rich and the corrupt can afford to be politicians.
Re:Less Government for Less Money (Score:4, Insightful)
You've been trolling this topic with the same inflammatory rhetoric that the above poster describes. The fact is that those items are a very small portion of our budget. Most communities in NY have volunteer fire departments, for one. They raise money for equipment in a variety of ways, and they are pretty darn effective.
We have a reduced need for jails, and local communities pay for a large portion of police forces.
Likewise, those people who do not have their own septic tanks, and rely on municipal services, pay for their sewer on the local level. Not State.
Ditto for non-state Highways, which are maintained on a local level. The Thruway is maintained too well, using the massive amount of revenue gained from confiscatory tolls, which were supposed to be eliminated a long time ago.
Take your Socialist party hat and move to Europe, where you will be welcome. NY has one of the largest education budgets on a per student level in the nation (over 20,000 per student in my area), and the education our children get has not justified the cost.
Even though we have had huge increases every year, we still have idiots clamoring for more, and meanwhile New York has been losing population for years, and businesses are not exactly chomping at the bit to move in.
I never got this... (Score:3, Insightful)
How the Government institutions tell folks that they should be more fiscally responsible while they run up more and more debt. I guess if I had a tax base, I wouldn't be concerned with how much I spent every year either.
A lot of the US should follow (Score:3, Interesting)
Not with the taxing entertainment, but I'm really not too upset about that one. But the rest of the country needs to back off on the social programs. Schools, no. Trying to pay for EVERYTHING to make sure EVERY warm body (citizen or not) has the same benefits as everyone else just isn't sustainable. Go ahead, tax the rich. And, as in the case of NYC, they are moving out in droves. So that leaves you with masses of people dependant on welfare, and no more rich left to tax.
California is going to be next here. They have a massive immigration issue. It's one thing to turn a blind eye (sanctuary cities anyone?) to the problem, Its another to try to feed, cloth, house, and healthcare every single person that shows up on your doorstep.
As Spock said, "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." The many are the 300Million United States Citizens, the few are the 20M illegal immigrants
Re:A lot of the US should follow (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean the illegal immigrants that pay all consumption, property and ownership taxes while not getting any of the direct benefits from them? The immigrants that are hired by US citizens? Yeah, they're the problem, not no-bid gov't contracts, spiraling health care costs, corporate subsidies (both industry and agricultural) along with two wars.
Re:A lot of the US should follow (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean the illegal immigrants who's kids suck up any and all tax money they may generate - and then some - the moment they enroll them in a public school? It costs ~$12k-$14k per kid. How many of these families generate enough income to cover just one kid? Not counting the other drains on social programs.
So yeah... they are the problem. So are the other things you meantion. They are not mutually exclusive.
Re:A lot of the US should follow (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd rather my taxes pay for the education of some kids from a hard working illegal immigrant family that values education than for the babysitting of some welfare babies that do not make any effort to learn.
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I don't want to call you stupid, but I think you may qualify. I live in California and my property tax runs about $6k-$7k per year. My home value is slightly above the state average. You REALLY think that the taxes generated by my property can cover even one single child? How much do you think the property taxes generated by a single home with 2-4 families living in it? Or an appartment? Seriously? Use your grey matter. They do NOT cover their costs even remotely. It's a huge drain on society which
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The problem is, they're only paying consumption taxes.
Being illegal, they aren't paying the income taxes.
In almost all cases, they can't own land, so they can't pay property taxes.
They aren't paying social security....
Looking at my paystub,
Fed Income Tax 154
Social Security 143
Medicare 33
State Income Tax 108
Health Insurance 326
All of things put together are what I pay to the govermnet every month so my kids can go to school, I have paved roads to drive on, there are parks in my neighborhood and when I get ol
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They get direct benefit.Everytime they drive their car across the street, or drink from public water supplies, or need assistance from a fireman or ambulance.
All they don't get benefit from are things like social security.
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Um... counter-point time.
Funny, that. I'm a "lifelong Californian and middle-aged guy" and I disagree with you. Not about the "immigrants" part, but your leaving out the fact that we aren't
No surprise. (Score:4, Interesting)
Politicians will tax everything they can lay their hands on:
- telephone
- cellphone
- cable
- ISP
- electricity/natural gas
- gasoline/road tax
- income tax
- social security/medicare (levied on both citizens and businesses)
- sales
- excise/manufacturing tax
- tariff/import tax
It was obvious internet downloads would eventually get taxed too. The average American pays 40% of their income in taxes. The average European 65-70%.
I wonder how this will affect retirement payouts (Score:3, Interesting)
I have two good friends who are retired school psychologists from New York ad everytme I read about New York's financial problems, I think of them.
Same thing in California: two relatives are teachers, and one is just about to retire on a teachers pension. I think that California is very close to bankruptcy.
Pensions may sound good, but it may be that only federal government pensions may pay out because the federal government can print money ad pay out in highly devalued dollars).
Cut costs? (Score:5, Insightful)
I recently read that New York City's entitlements policy, bloated "public service" sector, fiscal irresponsibility and system of governance were key in bringing on the bankruptcy [nypost.com] of the 70s.
Could this be a case of the tree not falling far from the apple?
The remedies in the 70s included fiscal conservatism, cutting entitlements, dealing with corruption and going after crime.
Rather than raising taxes to enable business-as-usual to continue unabated, maybe it's time state officials considered wielding the same scalpel used in the past to the body of the state today.
New York subsidizes the quite a few losers. (Score:5, Insightful)
Those losers being states that take in more federal tax money than they contribute. New York gives up 1/3 of it's tax revenue to states like MS,MO,AL,LA,WV,NC,SC, etc...You know, the 'conservative' states where 'small government' and 'less taxes' get a huge response.
Imagine if the Federal Government let New York keep that money in state...instant balanced budget and then some.
Extremely Shortsigh...err.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd say that these tax proposals are extremely short-sighted and show that our (un-elected) Governor lacks a vision or direction, but I wouldn't want to offend anyone [news10now.com]
People are Idiots (taxachusetts rant) (Score:2, Insightful)
Take Massachusetts. They had a chance to get rid of the state income tax. They voted agianst it by a 70-30 margin. State unions and pensions that go with it are out of control. the roads and bridges despite all the taxes are crap. I believe its 80% of highway funds go to administrative costs vs 20% goes into fixing the roads. Oh and for that they get a hole in the ground that was so shodily made its killed people, and it only cost them billions to build.
It seems all the gov run agencys are bankrupt y
NYS driving away everything in their own region (Score:4, Insightful)
NYS has been driving out businesses just by their costs and taxes. You pay taxes for everything and every piece of paper (permit, license, ...) from the government costs at least $10 for individuals, $100 for businesses. It's so bad that you can live in NYC but any decent company (datacenters. stocks and banking) is right outside the border in NJ. The same goes for Buffalo: it used to be a big business city; they all moved to Erie, PA or Canada and now that city is as good as dead. If you look at the border-towns (eg. PA-border) the NY-side of the border has the smallest population, no businesses except for a bar and no real-estate market (people dump it way below market value). On the other side of the border (the PA-side) there is a decent sized rural town, the shopping mall and stores like Wal-Mart are literally 1/2 mile away from the border, clearly built at a location to draw out the NYS folk.
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This is exactly what I learned 12 years (or more?) ago when I played Sim City for the first time.
Maybe we should get these politicians a copy so they can see what happens when you jack up taxes - abandoned warehouses, skyscrapers, and houses. Whoops!
New York Taxes (Score:3, Insightful)
Try parking legally in New York City. Am I right people?
My best attempt at a Simple Steps to Fix (Score:5, Insightful)
Consitiutional Amendments
"No governement agency at the federal, state, or local level shall spend in excess of the previous 3 years average of income from taxes and fees collected except through a voter approved bonding" (Prevent Overspending)
"No person shall have their property tax increased beyond 3% in any calendar year, nor increased greater then 100% since the time of purchase or transfer of ownership of their primary residence by any goverment agency." (Prevent trying to steal and redistributed land through taxing people out of their homes)
"A person shall be secure in their private property and eminent domain shall be restricted for use solely for the appropriation for government owned and operated use and may not be transfered to private ownership."
(Clean up 'public use' for land stealing)
"No company shall be tax on profits in excess of 5% of net revenue by the federal government and taxed no more then 15% when combined with local and state taxes." (Limit corporate income tax, so states at most can tax corporate income at 10%)
"The pay of corporate officers of a publically traded company shall be a scale of the median salary paid by the company to it's employees and contractors and may not exceed 10 times the median salary of the company in salary and no more then 20 times the median salary in stock compensation at the time of aquisition of those stock options." (If the typical employee makes $40,000 a year then the CEO can never make more then $400,000 in a salary and cannot receive more then $800,000 is stock in a year. If they want a raise, most employees must get a raise also)
"The term of any senate or house member shall be limited to 2 terms"
Those would go a long way.
screwing the lower classes... (Score:3, Interesting)
Movie tickets, taxi rides, soda, beer, wine, cigars and massages would be taxed under Paterson's proposal. It also extends sales taxes to cable and satellite TV services and removes the tax exemption for clothes costing less than $110...reinstating the sales tax on clothing and shoes will drive people to New Jersey, where they will also gas up their cars and pick up their wine, spirits and soda because the prices are less due to lower taxes.
Seriously.. taxing clothes under $110..... First off, I think they should tax the hell out of anyone who wants to spend $100 or more per item (obviously some larger items can be excluded) but don't tax the guy spending $20 on a pair of jeans from walmart. Tax those who can afford the 100+ pair of jeans...
And as for TV.. well, I know its not a necessity, but it does keep people occupied, and we are already unfee fee'd to death there, adding another tax, well then they better start making the cable/sat companies remove some of those unfee's that they have been milking for years.....
Or even better, the gov should make those unfee fee's actual gov taxers and use that money, the telco's/cable/sat/cell providers are not actually using the money for anything that they are supposed to (that $1 charge for number portability that was supposed to be temporary and go away after they recouped their costs to implement the infrastructure.... has long long since been done, and now the money is basically profit...)..
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That's always the case, say the politicians.
They will lose more votes cutting services just a little bit than by adding another straw to your back, which is to say, cutting funds to people who get money from government.
I can't imagine why businesses are fleeing overseas, with all this bread-and-circuses genius floating around like turds tied to balloons choking things more and more each year.
Even if you think every single law and every single payment level is needed, sooner or later the arteries clog and th
Re:paying the fps (Score:4, Insightful)
The US has on of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, so businesses move overseas to avoid that. If we lower the rates, the businesses would probably come back here, and those tax rates would actually start generating some revenue, rather than forcing business overseas and producing no revenue.
Whaaambulance (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post, and the parent post are choking on their own misinformation.
The US has on of the highest corporate tax rates in the world
If you want to pick a *single* statistic, to tie your frustrations to, then that's about as bad as it gets.
I think we would all agree that the American economy remains one of the most vibrant in the world. It remains one of the most business friendly. http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/10/smallbusiness/best_countries_for_small_biz.smb/ [cnn.com]
8 years of explicitly promoting a lax regulatory environment for every category of business in the U.S. hasn't seemed to have helped keep jobs in the U.S. at all. Wages certainly haven't gone up for those making less than $50,000/yr in the last eight years.
So let's chop away at those taxes! Publicly funded law enforcement is overrated. Organized crime/gangs do a good job protecting the neighborhood. Courts? Jails? Don't need em. Let's get rid of utility regulation too! You are perfectly willing to pay way more for electricity or safe fresh water at monopoly prices?
It's time you came to the realization that taxes are a part of what makes living in this country great.
Re:Whaaambulance (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time you came to the realization that taxes are a part of what makes living in this country great.
Except that you seemed to be aiming at the feds, yet the things you mention are overwhelmingly local in nature (law enforcement, courts, jails, utilities, water). Of course there are federal aspects to these things, but most of the money is collected and spent locally.
Federal money primarily goes to social security, interest payments on debt, welfare, and the military. You could argue that these things are "part of what makes living in this country great", but you have to at least concede that the opposite viewpoint also has some merit.
Re:Whaaambulance (Score:5, Insightful)
I call bullshit:
source: http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/myths.html [apa.org]
Find someone to pick on besides those that are scraping by. Keep in mind that the defense budget is 54% of the federal budget in the US. I'd much rather feed hungry people than shoot them.
source: http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm [warresisters.org]
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Sorry, I should have been more clear - I was lumping all of the department of health and human services together and calling it welfare. Medicare, medicaid, etc. This is one of the biggest items in the budget.
Defense budget is NOT 54% of the federal budget. That is propaganda from the other side! :) You'll always see the word "discretionary" put in front of that stat...
Re:Whaaambulance (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Whaaambulance (Score:5, Insightful)
So you'd rather preach, be self-righteous, and let people starve than deal with the REAL problems that are out there? I hate this "personal responsibility" crap. I am personally responsible. So are many people that get laid off and take advantage of the Unemployment Insurance that they PAY for out of their checks. The idea that somehow people in the past were more responsible, or educated, or hardworking is just plain crap. Every time the financial markets get deregulated, predatory lending takes off, and everyone ends up broke. The idea that somehow uneducated consumers that haven't dealt their whole lives with complex financial instruments that many of the people selling them don't even fully grasp is blaming the victim.
Why don't you take the energy used to create all that hot air and use it to make some positive changes in the world? Volunteer doing literacy training so that someone who "didn't pay attention in school" can get a shot at life and be productive members of society (since you understand that's what the VAST MAJORITY of them want to do?). Go feed some people at a homeless shelter and see how our Department of Veteran's Affairs leaves those that should be heroes behind to deal with debilitating psychological disorders without a shred of help.
Either grow a heart and start being a part of the solution or shut up and sit down.
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On the other hand, my grandfather died when my mom was 11. I'm sorry my grandmother couldn't get a college education when she was the right age for that (due to depression and war) so that she could get one of those great high-paying jobs available to women in the early 60s. She did the best she could get to raise her two kids (she worked, so did my mom and my aunt), but they still needed welfare to get by.
Geez, Grandma, you mean when you were 20 you didn't prepare for the possibility that your husband wo
Re:Whaaambulance (Score:5, Informative)
I'll say this real slow so you understand:
UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE IS NOT WELFARE.
It's paid for out of the checks of the workers (and then funneled into the programs by the federal government) that's why its called unemployment INSURANCE. This is the biggest crock of shit that the blame the victim "personal responsibility" crowd needs to get over. Its just as much welfare as your HEALTH insurance is.
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It's time you came to the realization that taxes are a part of what makes living in this country great.
No, our constitution and enforcement of it through our legal system are what make this country great.
Taxes are just a necessary evil. Switching over to a system like the Fair Tax would at least bring some sanity, and perhaps 'less evil', to the endeavor.
NY should drop their income tax and replace it with a flat sales tax increase.
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My bad, forgot to mention military. They way my brain works is that military is a given. The constitution does state "Provide for the common defense" so I see no reason why it would be cut. On the other hand, it also says "Promote general welfare" not "Provide general welfare"
Re:Whaaambulance (Score:5, Insightful)
white applicants with similar financial characteristics and credit histories
So they said, "If you're going to make shitty loans to white people, you have to make shitty loans to black people, too." It sounds like they were making shitty loans already.
I know a lot of the more conservative folks around here don't believe racism is real, but here's my opinion: Making bad loans to poor people is stupid, but making bad loans to poor white people and not to poor black people is stupid and racist.
In any case, you're just proving my point even more. Do you really think that ACORN suing banks to force them to be equal-opportunity idiots is the sole cause of the crisis? According to this [baltimoresun.com], this [mediamatters.org], and this [mcclatchydc.com], less than a quarter of the subprime loans were made by institutions that were covered by the CRA. Also, there's no data to suggest that CRA subprime loans have a higher default rate than the other 80% of subprime loans. And if ACORN sued Wells Fargo and CitiBank, how come Wells Fargo didn't go under because of all the bad loans it was forced to make in the last few years?
There's two sides to every story, and usually both sides are wrong. Certainly the government was stupid to encourage banks to make bad loans and are not without culpability here, but the banks were doing it anyway.
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Hogwash. This table [worldwide-tax.com] shows otherwise. Unless you think every business in the U.S. is taxed at 35%, the U.S. corporate tax rate is somewhere in the middle to lower end of the scale. And that does not include VAT.
What you did was take the combined corporate tax rate in the U.S., not the range of taxes corporations pay.
Further, using The Tax Foundation's [taxfoundation.org] figure of combined rates (which is what you're using), they use the example of S
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
part of the problem is that the tax brackets do not reflect the distribution of wealth in our society. we have tax brackets all the way up to ~$350K a year, but then we stop distinguishing between people who make $350K/year and people who make $1M/year and up. this bracket system puts an effective tax cap on the super-rich who possess the bulk of the national wealth.
by creating $1M/year, $2M/year, $4M/year, etc. brackets and introducing a wealth tax on billionaires we could reduce the tax rate among lower i
Re:paying the fps (Score:4, Insightful)
And there are. But you should stop listening when someone attempts to argue that they'll raise corporate tax in lieu of income tax and that that will benefit you the individual.
Corporate taxes are paid by you, the individual, in the form of increased prices for goods and services. For a corporation a tax is just like any other cost. Labor or utilities or copper. The primary difference between tax and most other costs is that aside from the above loopholes there is little incentive to compete with other businesses to reduce tax, or to innovate, or to be more efficient than the next guy.
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Assuming a classic demand curve an increased sales tax will drive down demand, but the customers that are left care less about price so the price you charge to maximize profit goes up more than the sales tax. However, with a tax on profits the price that maximizes profits does not change because there is no change to the demand curve or your costs. Basically, if you woul
Uhm, stupid question? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your argument is that a corporation selling Product X for $8.99 will raise the price to $9.99 if their taxes go up, and the customer will happily pay that price. So why exactly doesn't said corporation sell Product X for $9.99 *now* if that's the price that customers are willing to pay?
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Re:Tax marijuana instead (Score:4, Funny)
Legalise marijuana and tax it at $100 per ounce. Between the new tax revenue and the savings in less police and prison space we'll make $50 billion per year.
Legalize marijuana and tax it at $100 per ounce. Between the new tax revenue and loads of pot smokers, almost no one will CARE about the high taxes in New York.
There, FIXED that for you.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Lost his marbles? Please - He's the only responsible one up there in Albany!
The state has a 12 billion dollar shortfall - and NY State is not the federal government - it can't print money to get out of it. This is all because Pataki, Spitzer, and the other previous idiots running this state kept thinking the good times would be around forever, and passed spending programs that reflected it. Well now they're gone, and its about time an actual adult took responsibility and proposed serious ways of closing the