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Making Taxes Sing
Whoa! I got a bit confused during the show today when we talked about where exactly the tax money would come from to cover bonds to pay for a revamped soccer stadium (and a new ballpark for the Portland Beavers).
And I clearly wasn't the only one. Audrey Eschright, who was a guest on our open source show back in July, wrote about today's show on her Twitter feed:
I'm especially disappointed OPB didn't take the opportunity to talk about public vs. private resources, and funding models for dev.
...in a way that non-policy wonks could understand. Immensely confusing discussion if you have no background.
EvaCatHerder, who sometimes posts on this site, responded:
It drives me mad when policy is not discussed in English with non-wonkish types. Gives wonks like me a bad name.
And Audrey finished the exchange:
They should have had you on there. The program seemed designed to make $average_taxpayer frustrated and confused.
Obviously that wasn't our intention! Heck, I'm an average taxpayer, too. And that's why I wanted to know where the money really comes from. It seems like we can talk about the pros and cons of spending public money a lot better if we understand where the money comes from and how the whole system works.
Impossible? Irrelevant? Too boring? Maybe yes to all three, but nonetheless, we're going to try to keep talking taxes. Over the next couple of weeks we'll look at the state's efforts to raise new revenue. That includes things that might be easier to grasp, like the beer tax and changing the income tax. But also revenue projections and proposals to reform the kicker — which can get into wonky territory fast.
My question is this: What is the trick to talking about tax policies in a way that's interesting, relevant to the "average taxpayers," accurate and maybe even fun? All suggestions welcome.
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I would very much like to hear a conversation around the collective size of tax breaks relative to what we think of as the state budget. When I was in my final Masters of Public Administration year at PSU in '04 a professor of mine, Dan O'Toole, was preparing research findings that indicated the amount of tax breaks in the state were equivalent to the size of the revenue. Meaning, end all tax breaks and we'd double Oregon's tax revenue.
This info raised several questions. My gut reaction was that by giving away half the potential state revenue on the front end, legislators and the public were left to advocate for how to spend a much smaller amount of funding.
Is it true that most tax breaks are negotiated by lobbyists, outside of a broad public conversation about the value of the "expense" relative to other budget priorities? How right or fair or effective is it to determine tax policy and revenue generation in this manner?
Should tax breaks have automatic sunset clauses that force them to be reviewed on a regular basis by the legislature? Such a review could examine not only the efficacy of whether the tax break encouraged/limited specific behavior per the intention of the tax break, but also whether it is still appropriate given present state priorities and current scientific consensus.
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As a tax teacher, I love the idea of making taxes sing! I have a number of strategies for keeping students interested and making taxes relevant. But I'm not sure that they would work for your purposes -- they include discussing celebrity tax issues (lots of those around now -- just look at almost any Cabinet appointee), playing tax jeopardy, making art projects around tax issues, using cartoon characters in examples, and the Daily Show. Oregon has a couple of terrific resource people: Tim Nesbitt in the Governor's Office and Henry Breithaupt, the Oregon Tax Court Judge. Henry can explain state tax issues, starting from the Magna Carta. Tim can explain Bill Sizemore and why the Oregon corporate tax doesn't work as well as it could. Another one of your particular problems is that many aspects of tax have a strong visual component. Revenue projections make a lot more sense if you can see the chart of where we've been and where we're going. Finally, for relevance purposes, it's important for taxpayers to know who is going to bear the burden of the tax. Thus, if a proposal taxes a utility company, for example, that will mean higher rates for individual consumers. Your listeners need to know "where the buck stops." And finally again, your listeners need to know what the tax is going to pay for. Will it build a stadium? Will it fix those ever growing potholes? Good luck!
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A little interesting education might help. Spending tax dollars can get up there in some pretty big numbers
I have been thinking "billion" sounds like 2 million, "trillion"
sounds like 3 million, the concepts are large for an average or
non-numbers person.
Time equivalents:
One million seconds 11.574 days
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_days_take_up_one_million_seconds
One billion seconds 31.71 years
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_years_is_in_one_billion_seconds
one trillion seconds 31,546 years
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/
how_big_is_a_trillion.htm
For ease of comprehension;
Rounding up seconds:
1M = 12 days
1B = 32 years
1T = 32 thousand years
I guess the zeros add up!
note, it would take someone a lot longer than 32 thousand years
to verbally count to a trillion; there would be numbers whose names are so large, that it would take more than a second of clock time to pronounce them. For example: "Nine hundred and ninety nine billion, nine hundred and ninety nine million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine," takes about 8 seconds to pronounce.
I suppose if you are going to steel something, it pays to steel so
much the average person has no idea what happened. LOL! <crying too>.
Iraq war cost 3 to 9 T$. I have no idea if this includes the
Afghanistan war, I think not. -
continuing:
I have also heard that the Iraq war has cost to date 1T, but I think that may be the US cost, the war has cost others too, but some people don't count spending in other countries.
A solders pay is not much, so a lot of this money went to material and equipment. War is a racket. wouldn't that have done a lot of good in the USA spent on tax payers, schools, new energy sources, bridges?
Instead our grand kids will be paying for this. Should we at least say something? Is it better to be polite and just look to the future
Granted the stimulus will start at 7 to 800 B, or something like that, I could have it wrong by a few hundred thousand B -
A comparison between the founders and framers and what is happening now is great!
Britain imposed a series of taxes followed by other laws intended to demonstrate British authority that proved extremely unpopular. Because the colonies lacked elected representation in the governing British Parliament many colonists considered the laws to be illegitimate and a violation of their rights as Englishmen. Additionally, British mercantilist policies benefiting the home country resulted in trade restrictions, which limited the growth of the American economy and artificially constrained colonial merchants' earning potential. In 1772, Patriot groups began to create committees of correspondence, which would lead to their own Provincial Congress in most of the colonies. In the course of two years, the Provincial Congresses or their equivalents rejected the Parliament and effectively replaced the British ruling apparatus in the former colonies, culminating in 1774 with the unifying First Continental Congress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution
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the monarchy was practicing “taxation without representation” and the people were being taxed heavily to pay for the french and indian war,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Indian_War
like the Iraq and Afghanistan
http://mccaskill.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=299688
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/oil_war.htm
Britten working in collaboration with the East India Tea Company against the interest of the common person. Some of the colonists were afraid to stand up to England, a super power, so they disguised themselves as indigenous people and dumped East India tea into Boston harbor.
raw material was being shipped from the colonies to Europe, made into products and shipped back and sold to the colonists for a profit. It may have been illegal for colonists to make or market certain things.
Kind of similar to what is happening with India and China and the USA now, we ship recycled metal to China which is made into things and shipped back. After all of the GM EV1s and most of the Rav4s and Ford EVs were crushed, congress passed a law that is was illegal to market a mass produced freeway capable EV in the USA, all though, I can find no reference to it now, so maybe this didn't happen.
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We have the same thing happening now. We have government that is big businesses friendly telling lies through the mainstream media
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0624-25.htm
about yellow cake uranium and WMD and then an invasion of a country that did nothing (all but 3 of the “hijackers” were Saudi Arabian, I think, and 3 were Iraqi) to the US and was not a threat to the US, yet the US is there, insuring no interruption of oil profits to big businesses. If you ask people why the US is conducting military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, they will tell you looking for and killing terrorists.
If Iraq had come to the USA with an official military, enforced a no fly zone over the USA, blown up utilities, set up oil production sharing agreements and labeled any resistance as terrorists that are killed with impunity, we would have a symmetrical arrangement, but I doubt we would greet them as liberators.
If you look at the who has been doing well recently one answer is the large oil companies with the largest profits of any company in history. I can only assume that big oil is benefiting from US military action. If one looks at how much money is going to the big oil companies the question arises “Did big oil order the war against Iraq?”
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Now, if we look at how the military is funded; though tax dollars to the tune of $3T to $9T (for long term care of war veterans. How much more would it be if reparations to the 1M Iraqis refugees), and the military is working on behalf of big oil, aren't the citizens paying taxes which are being used for big oil profits at the expense of US and Iraq lives, does this qualify as taxation without representation?
This brings us to the question of corporate personhood. Corporations pay taxes, so are the action military action on behalf of big oil is justified?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
The answer is “no”.The american revolution was fought in response to corporate excesses and taxes levied to pay for war, just as we have now.
The purpose of lobbyists is to promote special interest consideration that would otherwise be down played with respect to policy, so by inference, special interests are often contrary to the interests of the general public, and to the extent that special interests are contrary and legislated is the extent that we, the general public, are not represented in government.
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For those that disagree, what is the purpose of lobbyists then. Are they a good expense to profit oriented businesses to invest in?
My congressman's representative told me there are 60,000 lobbyists in Washington DC these days.
You could even present the purpose of the federal reserve, a quasi corporation with a conflict of interest charged with the task of stabilizing financial markets. Do they have a interest in market instability as well? Do they operate with tax money?
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I think it is time to take a closer look all the unfunded and under-funded mandates that we have lobbied our Federal and State government officials to legislate As I see it, enthusiasm for adequate funding wanes rather quickly. Road construction, prison operations, etc. are rarely sustained. I have been led by Hollywood to believe that even in the best of times ex-cons have difficulty finding gainful employment. Why are our legislators considering releasing prisoners in order to save money? What’s an unemployed homeless ex-convict to do?
I think we could use technology to revise the Oregon Tax structure. The mileage tax plan is one example (I am one who believes that a Weight factor should also be included). Another might be a tax on personal property, renter‘s insurance, and auto-value insurance as a means to partially fund fire and police services. My point is that we can now improve the correlation of a tax and the government services provided. I would hope that such a plan would limit the range of services eligible to be funded by a given tax.
The problem revising the tax code is that age old dilemma – Where in the World do you go to find the honest fair minded persons required?
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Good point, and one I ponder a lot. My gut reaction is to look back at what sparked the American Revolution and what the result was, "land of the free, home of the brave" ... "as long as you $5 per day to play on federal land?" Is the USA “the land of the free”? Personal income tax was not part of the Founders vision. ALL TAXES were paid by corporations, in response to so many taxes, demands (to house British troops) and restrictions placed on the colonists in the 1700s.
Perhaps this is what we should return to. Is there a possibility that if imperial wars were not fought big business could pay for everything? Granted big oil is benefiting from USA military action to the tune of the largest profits ever of all time, but that is because they are stealing oil from Iraq
http://mccaskill.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=299688
So large corporations maybe could pay for all the taxes now. I wonder if they could pay even if they didn't steal, I contend that it is an under reported privilege to have access to sell to the USA, one thing that the founders understood and turned into a country “of, for and by the people” meaning, in part; funded by corporations, not the private common person. To tell the truth, I think big businesses are having a field day, monetary orgy, on the backs of the general public, not only with low taxes percentages they paid compared with private persons (zero) in the first 150 years of the USA, but also with so called “free trade” where corporations ship jobs overseas, and pay $0.50 an hour, but in the case of Nike shoes in the 1980s, at the same time increased the cost of their shoes from $30 to over $90, as I recall, maybe even $140
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The Corporation has access to advertise on TV, radio, news papers, the Internet, billboards along the roads, and customers use public transportation, roads, the USPS, and other business to ship their products, all of which are ways to support a revenue stream, that is why they should pay to have the privilege to do business. The USA wasn't created for business to take advantage of people, to be manipulated by big business, so businesses could do whatever they want when ever they want however they want, corporations were created with certain advantages and if corporations were not operating in the interest of the general public, their corporate charter was revoked. The framers of the constitution were very strict about this, they only allowed a corporation to make one thing, say matches, if they made matches, they couldn't also make shoes, and the secretary of state reviewed corporate behavior and if corporations didn't do what they were supposed to, they were revoked. I wonder what big oil would have to do to have it's charter revoked now a days?
In fact, a major tax was federal excise tax (I am not sure what this is) and import taxes; the opposite of "free trade". The media has been floating protectionism as a legitimate concern, with several quotes from diverse sources as saying "I am concerned that we avoid protectionism" i.e. Corporate profits, which the media presents as if the general public should be concerned. I wonder how we ever made it through the first 200 years with all the protectionism, it was so terrible then, it is so much better now that we have no manufacturing, no middle class, mainly those at the poverty line and the super rich, and a broken economy.
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Taxes can be fun? This I've got to hear! I just filed my return yesterday and I'm not a happy camper. But I'll count my hatched chickens: I have Emily, Dave and Think Out Loud to keep me scratching my head and swearing at the radio. Thank you!
Taxes are another pink elephant we try to stuff into a refrigerator as we nurse a hangover. We've got to divide this odious beast into five-dollar foot longs.
1. Revise the tax system. The current system is too complex and corrupted. Make paying and administering taxes simple and easy. Alternately, get rid of the existing tax systems and start over with better replacements.
2. Federal and state budgets must be pork free.
3. Nobody should be able to game the tax systems with impunity.
4. The tax system has to be fair to everybody.
5. We must address the disparity in income between rich and poor. Executives should not make 1,000 to 10,000 times more than their workers. We shouldn't have poor or underclass citizens.
6. Wall Street fat cats should not "earn" $60 million bonuses and golden parachutes while their businesses languish on life support.
7. The rich should not pay for those who can't pay taxes, especially when it's the rich who provide livelihoods. We must not overly tax those who add value to society.
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Taxe Reform Continued
8. We do need to corner the crooks in their spider holes and convince them to change. I suggest peeling off their skins with rusty pliers but I'll accept changing the system so they can't hire excellent lawyers and accountants to get out of paying taxes. Billionaire Leona Helmsley saying "...only little people pay taxes." entirely frosts my gourd.
9. The system we have is backwards. The poor are penalized. At Vanguard, investors with fewer resources pay more in fees. The rich pay less because they invest more, but the poorer investors need the reduced fees. (Let's not shed crocodile tears for those who have resources to invest in equity markets when most people in this world can't get enough to eat.)
10. Most of us want just enough government to do specific tasks for us. Fine, let's close the 900-some military bases the U.S. has spread around the world to prop up U.S. imperialism. Refer to Blowback and Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson. Our military exploits are budgeted at $500 billion a year. The Iraq and Afghanastan wars have, or will, cost trillions? This doesn't make any sense, especially given our ongoing economic keel hauling.
11. Let's take the State and Federal tax forms and reduce them to two pages at most. Remove all the loopholes and preferential treatment. We must create a fair tax system that treats poor, medium and rich fairly. This would free up a majority of the Federal government's 115,000 IRS employees to do useful work. How many hundreds of millions of hours do we spend filing tax returns which are fraught with errors and fraud? Nothing against the tax preparation business, but we should not need professional tax preparers to help us complete overly complex tax returns.
12. Closer to home, how much is Oregon's budget? 16 billion for two years? Fine. How realistic is Oregon's budget? How much pork is in it? Has the Oregon budget been fiercely combed to eliminate unnecessary spending bugs? How many tax payers were there in Oregon before the "economalypse(tm)"? Divide Oregon's budget by the number of tax payers and we'll arrive at the average tax to be paid by each of us.
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Taxes Continued
13. I'm annoyed the Federal government gets 5% to 35% (possibly after 2010), of tax payers' capital gains. Back in the day mostly rich people played with stocks and the government sought a cut of the action. But now there a lot of us lose money with stocks and 401ks.(Lottery for those of us who've escaped Vegas, Megabucks and Spirit Mountain thus far. I have nothing against gambling until it goes pear shaped.)
I hear all sorts of conflicting information. For example, 62% of federal tax revenue is provided by the rich: those making more than $250,000 annually. Is that true? I don't believe it.
Two days ago I heard on OPB that the IRS is attempting to force UBS to reveal the names and personal information of U.S. rich citizens who've stashed their cash in purportedly secret Swiss bank accounts. 12 names have been revealed out of an initial pool of 300. Purportedly, there are 52,000 Americans who have Swiss bank accounts used expressly to avoid paying U.S. taxes.
Enough already.
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So if we only tax the poor... The richest among us will feed us, clothe us, give us work; make sure we have a superior education. We will not go back to sweat shops, child labor, no unions &/or living in slums. Health care will improve, corruption will cease, and health care will be available financially for everyone. And government will stay out of mens lives. Women will no longer be able to vote or have a say on anything including their own bodies. But hey, only conservatives and the rich count.
Corporations without accountability and of course no taxes will keep jobs in the US and keep prices of commodities and food low because by nature they are humanitarian and haven't discovered greed. The banks will lend us money and not charge us high fees, because we the tax payers are bailing them out. They will forgo big parties and bigger bonus's for themselves, because they understand that people in this country are losing their jobs and their health care and their houses, because of what they have already done. Perhaps, if the rich conservatives have their way... We will develop a caste system like India, where if you are born poor you will always be poor and untouchable. The wild west is coming back.... Shoot um up to get what you want..... But Rush, and all the other conservative pundits...This is just Capitalism and Democracy and of course,it would never be classified, as a redistribution of wealth.....
So The rich and conservative will set us free... Will save our country..... Give them bailouts and subsidities, take away their taxes, they have "earned" the right to screw the rest of us.... Each conservative for himself..... Hip Hip Horray!
DenaB
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because of gas taxes, we are allowed to have hybrids and plug-in hybrids, not EVs. The GM EV1 was produced from 1996 to 1999 and crushed in 2003
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5871495968130273402
EV1s with a simple single drive system had the equivilant energy efficiency of 114 mpg but mostly from coal, not from imported oil, was 2 to 3 times as efficent as the Prius. Although most of our power comes from coal, if we support renewable energy, it could replace coal so our cars would be run on renewable energy. "it can't be done" take a look at this project from several years ago:
http://www.greenplanet3.org/ev/Home.html
How did this back yard mechanic do this when no one else can?
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0624-25.htm
The Prius has a weak electric system that is supplimented with a small gas powered internal combustion engine. This is an ingeneous way to connecting the EV back to the gas pump so oil companies can continue their strangle hold on transportation.
A frequent topic to come up in EV chat rooms is why the big three automakers continue to produce ICE automobiles when they now have proven that EV's are viable and reliable vehicles. Of course there are as many conspiracy theories out there as there are used automobiles. The truth is easy enough to derive if you just follow the money.
The United States tax economy runs on oil. Just as simple as that.
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The Federal government cannot allow for the introduction of Electric Vehicles on a large scale as it would undermine the tax structure that keeps the tax coffers full. This explains why such stringent rules are always set in place to prevent the vehicles from being mass produced.
On the average day the United States uses 400,000,000 gallons of gas. That is four hundred million gallons. The Federal tax on this is 18.4 cents per gallon.
If you take the daily use and multiply it by the number of days in a year you come up with 146 billion gallons of gas consumed per year. At 18.4 cents per gallon that is $27,000,000,000 (27 billion dollars) in Federal taxes yearly. That is a lot of tax revenue to try to replace!
The tax on gas at the state level varies a great deal, you can look up your state's fuel tax at http://www.virginiagasprices.com/tax_info.aspx
The average of 50 cents will be applied though, and that results in $73,000,000,000 (73 billion dollars) of state level taxes. That is a huge amount of tax revenue to have go away. How would the government fund pet projects without that kind of money?
So in summary, to introduce a viable electric vehicle to the market would kill $100,000,000,000 in taxes. Plus it eliminates the easiest method the Federal government has for dipping in to your wallet.
On another note: Many people wonder why that 9/10 of a cent thing is on every gallon of gas price. There are many stories about this, one of them is probably true, but the fact of the matter is that that 9/10 extra on the price generates an additional $141,000,000 (141 million dollars) for the oil companies.
Now the answer to the question is fairly obvious. The United States government can't afford an electric vehicle industry.
http://www.lionev.com/FAQ_s.html
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Thoughts on Soccer / Baseball
Perhaps the Soccer and Baseball fans could contribute monthly to fund a credit default swap to protect Portland and Oregon taxpayers.
Can a plan be developed with a single site serving both sports?
Could the defunct Multnomah Kennel Club serve as a viable site?
Building a Stadium large enough to accomodate a major league baseball team might just offset the idea that Portland's fan base is not large enough. Build it and they will come! Well maybe.
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Why not shift taxes away from things we want to encourage (bicycling, employment) and onto things we want to discourage (gasoline consumption, pollution, parking lots, stormwater runoff, cul-de-saks and big-box stores)?
When viewed from this point of view, raising the gas tax is actually a pretty good idea...provided we eventually lower other taxes.
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Comments are now closed.
I actually thought the discussion of the funding for the Soccer stadium was more informative than usual in decoding the policy speak (how they justify their claims of taxpayer benefits, etc.) but you have to really be paying attention to figure out who is responding to what argument.
I think that Emily Harris often does an excellent job of clarifying what people are saying, especially when guests are responding to policy speak using policy speak, and catching them in using misleading language. The host's questions are key to framing the discussion so we all get a better understanding of what's going on.
Mainly, I want to know
1. the theories behind the optimistic claims of "no cost to taxpayers", etc. (ask tough questions and make them explain themselves in plain English)
2. How do tax policies affect individuals? For example, last year you did a show on Bill Sizemore's propositions but there was no discussion of at what income people would be affected. Maybe get an tax preparer on the show for situations like that?