Backwards Day

By Jeff Simpson

Apparently, in the land of Fitzwalkerstan, increasing the price of all goods, will make people want to buy more*.

*unless its to pay workers more.  

Gov. Scott Walker said Monday his administration will explore eliminating the state’s income tax.
“There are many states that do very well, better than most states in the country, that have no income taxes," Walker said during the governor’s Northern Economic Development Summit in Pembine, according to Wispolitics.com. "That's one thing for us to look at. Is that feasible? What would that mean in terms of an economic boost? That's not only for individuals, but small businesses in this state."

 Not sure that Scott Walker and the republicans in WI could be any more anti-business than they are,  then they come up with ideas like this and trump all of their other anti business policies prior. In what reality does increasing the price of goods 8-10 % make people want to purchase more? 

 

This is such a silly idea that it was too crazy for Louisiana and Bobby Jindal. 

 

 

Walker isn’t the first conservative extreme right wing governor to look at scrapping income taxes. Early this year, Lousiana Gov. Bobby Jindal proposed replacing his state’s income tax with a sales tax, but he abandoned the plan in the face of widespread opposition.
“All along, opposition to the tax swap was growing broader and more bipartisan by the day. Clergy members urged the governor to drop the plan, saying it could hurt the poor, while the state’s most prominent chamber of commerce group came out against the plan for its potential impact on businesses,” the New York Times reported in April.

We have become the dumping ground for failed extremist views.   

 

Nice.   

 

 

Get used to this and more, since the democratic party can't win an election anywhere!   

 

 

 

Walker's Tax Relief For the Wealthy Campaign Tour

In his most recent e-newsletter, Scott Walker proudly announced yet another campaign tour of the state, this time promoting his tax cut for the wealthy - y'know, so that they have more to donate to his campaign. His talking points are:

This week, we kicked off the “Tax Relief for Wisconsin” tour at Northcentral Technical College in Wausau and at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater La Crosse and called on members of the Assembly and Senate to support the 2013–15 Biennial Budget’s tax relief package totaling nearly $1 billion.

Everyone in Wisconsin who pays income taxes, will receive a tax rate cut under this package, and the largest rate cuts will be for those making between $15,000 and $50,000 per year. Middle-class families deserve a break, which is why I'm calling on members of the Assembly and Senate to pass a budget providing nearly $1 billion in tax relief for the hardworking taxpayers of our state.
Highlights of the tax package, which passed the Joint Finance Committee last week, include:

• A total income tax cut of $650 million over two years and total tax cuts in the budget approaching nearly $1 billion.
• Every Wisconsinite, who pays income taxes, will receive an income tax rate cut.
• A typical family of four with an income of $80,607 will receive a tax cut of $345 for tax years 2013 and 2014.
• The largest income tax cut in 14 years.
• Hardworking Wisconsin families should be able to keep more of the money they earn, so they can build a brighter future of their choosing for their children and grandchildren.

Our tough, but prudent, decisions resulted in a surplus of over half a billion dollars, and I believe the surplus should be returned to taxpayers. We've accomplished a great deal to improve Wisconsin's business climate and providing this relief will continue to make our state more competitive.

I still find his last bullet point a most annoying lie. I know of tens of thousands of public employees who wish they were allowed to keep more of they money they earn. And given the way the state's economy has tanked since the passage of Act 10, I bet there are tens of thousands more private sector employees who wish that too, so that they could have kept their jobs.

And we all already know all about his "improved" business climate, which dropped the state to 49th in the nation.

But like everything else Walker, the tax cut is a bunch of hooey.

The reality of the situation is that the tax cut is designed to help the top earners of the state while the lowest tax brackets literally gets pennies:

Here is how the tax cut would be distributed among income groups:

- The top 5% of earners alone, a group with an average income of $392,000, would receive more than 1/3 of the benefit of the income tax cuts.

- The top 20% of earners, a group with an average income of $183,000, would receive more than 2/3 of the benefit.

- The bottom 60% of earners – those making $60,000 a year or less – would only receive 11% of the benefit of the income tax cuts.

- The 20% of the Wisconsinites with the lowest incomes would receive just two cents out of every $100 in individual income tax cuts under this proposal.

Even worse, the reason that Walker is giving for this giveaway to the wealthy - job creation and economic stimulation - is also so much poppycock:

"The governor has argued that by putting more money in people's hands, the tax cuts will spur economic growth in Wisconsin," said Andrew Reschovsky, a UW-Madison professor of public affairs and applied economics. "There is no evidence that the tax cut will do much to encourage growth and job creation."

Mark Schug, a UW-Milwaukee professor emeritus who now consults in the area of economic education, agreed that such a cut is not likely to be an economic boost.

"I do tend to think that the income tax reduction is not sufficient," Schug said.

Representative Dale Kooyenga, who authored this monstrosity, admits it's top heavy, but falsely claims that there is nothing that could be done to make it fairer to low income families:

Earlier this year, Governor Scott Walker proposed his own income tax cut ,which was slammed for mostly benefiting the wealthy (in large part because an Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) analysis showed that it was tilted that way). The Governor’s proposed income tax rate cuts were expected to cost the state $343 million over two years; Representative Kooyenga’s would cost $760 million in the upcoming budget and $914 million in the 2015 budget.

And it’s not just costly, it’s regressive. As the lawmaker himself concedes, “[i]t is nearly impossible to create a tax reform or tax cut that is not going to disproportionately lower taxes for upper-middle-class and rich taxpayers,” and a new ITEP analysis of Kooyenga’s plan shows his is no different. ITEP ran the numbers for the Wisconsin Budget Project (WBP) the impact of the Kooyenga income tax plan was shown to be even more skewed to the wealthy that Governor Walker’s...

Actually, there are ways to make it more balanced and fairer - as well as more beneficial to the economy. One could start by simply restoring the cuts made to the Earned Income Credit and Homestead Act, which had raised taxes on the poorest of the poor in this current budget.

It should also be noted that this budget will jack up property taxes. Given how many people's property taxes went up when it Walker claimed to cut them, this could be devastating now that they are admitting to raising them.

Furthermore, it is projected by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau that this "tax cut" will be the driving force behind a $677 million drop in state revenue. Rest assured that Walker and his Teapublican allies will used this self-created fiscal crisis to cut more jobs and more services.

Sadly, all of this is the rosy outlook. Because, as Democurmudgeon points out, Kooyegna, the accounting super dud, is counting on pixie dust and unicorn's rainbows for it to be even this "good" (emphasis his):

Thank you Rep. Dale Kooyenga. He's an accounting wiz. Aside from the $92 million in taxes currently not collected, would you bank on that? Forget about the nation’s economic growth projections by the Federal Reserve (negative growth) and the World Bank’s new projection (1.9%). Kooyenga assumes growth will be at 3.3%. “We’re in real trouble” says GOP Sen. Dale Schultz. No kidding.

Is it any wonder that Walker's campaign tour is not open to the public. The vast majority of us who are going to be hurt by the Teapublicans' maleficence would have some things to say to him which wouldn't fit in at all with the image that his campaign is trying to spin.

Don't Back Up That Brinks Truck For Walker's Tax Cuts

Ever since Scott Walker gave his campaign speech disguised as a budget address, the right wing squawkers, blarghers and other propagandists have been faithfully been echoing the talking point that Walker put in an income tax cut in his 2011-13 budget.

But don't back up that Brinks armored truck to haul off your share of the wealth.* You won't even need your kid's piggy bank for it:

For example, a family of four with taxable income of $25,000 would see their state income tax bill go down by $6. At $50,000, the savings is $54; at $100,000 it’s $138; and at $200,000 the savings is $270.

"At first blush, the proposed tax cuts sound like they will help moderate-income families but the primary effect is to help the wealthy,” says Jon Peacock of the Wisconsin Budget Project.

Peacock notes that more than half of the projected $172 million in income tax cuts annually would go to the upper 20 percent of state residents.

“This just exacerbates the problem that the rich pay a much lower percent of their income for state and local taxes than lower-income Wisconsin families,” he says, noting a recent national report on that issue.

That really pales in comparison to what Walker did for his corporate sponsors in the current budget:

Actually, Walker’s 2011-2013 budget did use tax credits to target a specific group: factory owners and their investors. A domestic production tax credit that kicks in this year will deliver an estimated $360 million in tax savings to manufacturers over the next four years and some $130 million each year thereafter, according to the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Considering that the median household income is about $50,000, that means most of us might save a buck a week. Hoard up those savings for a full month and you might, just might, be able to buy a gallon of gas. I say might, because under Walker's reign of economic terror, incomes keep dropping.

It should be pointed out that Walker's tax cuts are so lopsided it does next to nothing to help the poorest of the poor, who were punished for their poverty in Walker's first budget:

Last summer, the state Legislature reduced the amount of money low- income families can receive in tax credits by $56.2 million.

That places Wisconsin among only a handful of states that will effectively raise taxes on their poorest residents in 2012, according to a recent study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit think tank.

"At a time when low-wage workers are already struggling, this makes it that much more difficult (for them) to feed their families and pay their utility bills," said Jon Peacock with the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, an advocacy group that opposed the changes

Likewise, it offers no relief for the fees that Walker raised through the roof in the last budget and wants to rise even higher in this budget.

Another thing that the Walker apologists are touting his that Walker is proposing a freeze on property tax rates. That should scare the bejeebers out of you.

In Walker's current budget, he touted he cut property taxes. But like the majority of Wisconsinites, our property taxes had actually gone up. They would have probably gone up even higher, but Walker's policy of lowering our quality of life included lowering our property values.

Since my taxes went up by some 9% with Walker's tax cuts, I can't even imagine how much they'll go up with a freeze - 20%? 25%?

I wouldn't mind my taxes going up so much if we had something to show for it, like a decent education system, public safety, assistance for our neediest and most vulnerable citizens or even some creation.

Instead we have nothing to show but some of the most generous corporate welfare giveaway that do nothing to help our state.

But no one should be surprised. This is just a remake of his failures in his last budget, for which we didn't need that armored car either.


*Since Walker's make-believe surplus, which is actually a deficit he's not admitting too, which he is using for these tax cuts come from the money he took from public sector workers, isn't that socialism - forced sharing of the wealth?