Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.
While Congress and the White House debate the contents, and necessity, of another relief bill, cash-strapped state and local governments are weighing their own options – including increasing a variety of taxes:
…early evidence suggests the coronavirus could lend at least some new political momentum for long-simmering campaigns to raise fees on a wide array of products and services, including alcohol, tobacco and gaming, said Jared Walczak, a state budget analyst for the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, particularly if those taxes can offset debilitating cuts.
“There’s going to be a sense in which any sectors that look comparatively healthy will be attractive targets for taxation over the next couple of years,” he said.
Hiking specific fees or only certain taxes concentrates the pain and spreads the benefits. That offers some level of political protection, and is a favored tactic of politicians, regardless of party, in tough economic times:
During the Great Recession, some states raised income, sales and other business taxes along with a host of additional fees, according to a report at the time from the CBPP, which said the increases helped cover the costs of surging demand for government services.
What about cutting budgets and reducing government employment? Many state and local governments are doing both (or considering it). But the mantra of many elected officials echoes the sentiment of New York state Sen. Andrew Gounardes (D), who wants to slap higher taxes on some of the nation’s largest technology companies:
“It’s just not possible to cut our way out of this hole,” Gounardes said.
Image Credit: By Jericho [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
wpDiscuz
Quit spending like there is no tomorrow, were all tired of paying for your pet projects.
You mean like the $1,200 each pet project.
Perhaps if they quite squandering money to try and buy votes and wasting money giving criminal Illegal
Invaders money over burdening their budgets they might have enough money to do the jobs they were
elected to do. Then do not spend money you have already allocated to retirement programs and other
items you committed to over the past years.
I hope that you are not trying to say that my $1,200 Trump Bucks were a waste of money.
Or that it was a effort to buy my vote.
“allocated to retirement programs” do you mean Social Security?
Our pure Communism retirement program?
Social security and the federal income tax were originally made voluntary to the American people but overtime it just became mandatory. What federal statute declares the limit to the exercise of the IRS a public office at the seat of the United States ? 4 USC 72 restricts the exercise of all public offices in the exercise of such offices to the District of Columbia and not elsewhere. 4 USC 72 has not been amended by expressly enacted law by Congress. Do your homework folks and read the laws you are allegedly charged with.
Raise taxes and blame Trump! Hasn’t that been the Democrat mantra since 2016?
Taxes, where is the liability for the taxes. As an example, take the sales tax and to whom state law declares who is the taxpayer. For the example consider Florida. The Florida statutes website is the place to read the sales tax statute. There you will see by reading the text of the law that the sales tax does not apply to the majority of the people of the state, because legislative intent governs the law. The law was corrupted by the legislature by not defining the legal terms of, customer, purchaser, buyer and consumer. Within the law is mention of a dealer purchaser to whom the sales tax would apply. However the State of Florida is allowing the tax to be paid by outsiders, citizens of the state and citizens as out of state. How this law is being enforced, is by corruption of state government at the expense of ignorance of the people at large.
Privileges are taxable while rights are not.