We retired Tax Justice Blog in April 2017. For new content on issues related to tax justice, go to www.justtaxesblog.org
Bad news out of Louisiana, where the chairman of a commission reviewing the state’s tax breaks says they will likely fail to make recommendations for which breaks should be reformed or eliminated. Turns out no one has been collecting useful data on their cost and performance, and no methodology for comparing tax breaks against each other is available. Both of these shortcomings could have been prevented had the state followed ITEP’s five recommendations for tax expenditure reform .
Policy Matters Ohio has a new report reinforcing the idea that gambling revenue is not a panacea (PDF) for ailing state and local budgets. The report’s major finding? “New casino tax revenue will provide less than a quarter of the nearly $1 billion in annual losses local governments will see because of cuts in state aid… Ohio needs to boost its investment in schools, local governments and human services with additional revenue from those who can afford to pay. Revenue from gambling does not suffice.”
Here’s a great blog post from our friends at the Oklahoma Policy Institute (OKPolicy) about the diastrous tax plan that Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed last May, and why Oklahoma policymakers shouldn’t pursue the same sorts of costly and regressive tax cuts enacted by their neighbors in the Sunflower State. OKPolicy concludes, “Oklahoma does not need to be the next laboratory for Kansas’ radical tax experiment.”
Picking up on Mitt Romney’s infamous assertion about the 47 percent, this post from the Wisconsin Budget Project answers the question “Who’s in the “47%” in Wisconsin?” They use Census data and figures from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) to figure out who really are the “moochers.” The Budget Project argues that there are “numerous Wisconsin workers who would probably love to earn enough to owe income taxes,” so the smart move would be implementing policy options to improve their compensation and help them join the tax -paying ranks.