CTJ's Tax Justice Digest, June 8, 2007

Budget Battles in State Capitols

Face-Off Over Taxes in New England

Policymakers in New England saw several budgetary showdowns this week. On Wednesday, members of the Connecticut General Assembly missed an end-of-session deadline for adopting their state's budget for the next two years. One of the most contentious issues in the debates surrounding the spending measure is, not surprisingly, taxes.

Both chambers of the Assembly recently approved bills that would make Connecticut's personal income tax more progressive and that would yield revenue needed to address structural budget shortfalls and to support new initiatives. While there are differences between the bills backed by the two chambers, conflict is much more likely with Governor Jodi Rell, who has already suggested that she would veto any such tax increase.

Interestingly, just four months ago, Rell herself proposed raising the state's top personal income tax rate. She now argues that anticipated budget surpluses are sufficient to meet the state's needs.

In New Hampshire, some substantial differences will likely have to be hammered out within the legislature. The House of Representatives previously passed a budget that relied on an increase in the state's real estate transfer tax and a 45-cent jump in the cigarette excise. The Senate this week was expected to vote on a version of the budget that abandons the transfer tax increase and that would push the cigarette excise up by just 28 cents.

Legislative Session Ends With Disappointment in Minnesota

Despite evidence that a majority of Minnesotans supported an income tax increase on better off Minnesotans in exchange for property tax cuts, the legislative session ended without the creation of a new top income tax bracket. The bill sent to Governor Tim Pawlenty would have created a new 9 percent top income tax rate for married couples with taxable income above $400,000 ($226,000 for singles), but Governor Pawlenty vetoed the legislation and the battle for progressive taxes will have to wait for another year. In the meantime, the Star-Tribune is right when it says that the Governor's veto, "keeps Minnesota on a road toward more regressive taxation."

Showdown in the Tar Heel State

North Carolina policymakers appear to be deeply divided over the state budget and much is at stake for low- and middle-income taxpayers. In one corner, the state House of Representatives and the Governor are advocating budget packages that include extensions of temporary tax rate hikes in both the income and sales tax. House leaders say this revenue is necessary to help pay for the growing needs of the state. An exciting development in the House budget is the North Carolina Rewarding Work Tax Credit (a state version of the Earned Income Tax Credit). In the other corner, the state Senate passed a budget which allows the temporary tax hikes to expire and there's no targeted tax credit included. Earlier this week the House voted to reject the Senate's budget, so now the real show down begins. Policymakers must work quickly if they hope to pass a two-year budget by July 1 when the fiscal year begins.

Carbon Emissions Reduction Plans Debated

Several bills have been introduced in the U.S. Senate to create a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions. At a recent forum on the topic hosted by the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, debate over the regulation of greenhouse gases focused on the advantages and disadvantages of implementing either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program, both of which are market-based approaches to reducing global warming.

A carbon tax is straightforward in that it requires firms to pay a fixed amount for each unit of carbon emissions they produce. This increases the cost of fuels for the producers and is passed down in the form of higher prices to consumers. Both producers and consumers then have the incentive to either consume less, consume more efficiently or find alternate fuels. Firms that use these alternatives avoid paying the tax and reduce their emissions. Firms that don't use the alternatives pay the tax. As with any tax on consumption, a carbon tax burdens people of low incomes disproportionately, making this tax regressive. The tax revenue generated could go toward compensating those impacted most harshly, although it might be difficult to target such compensation towards those affected.

A cap-and-trade program works by setting a limit on total emissions and then distributing allowances for firms to pollute corresponding to that limit. The firms can then trade these allowances, the idea being that this will lead to a more efficient outcome. Firms that can reduce emissions cheaply will do so, and then sell excess permits to firms for which it is costly to reduce emissions. As with a carbon tax, the added cost to firms of buying allowances would cause the price of fuels to increase. This would force consumers to alter their behavior, and also place a heavy burden on low-income families, making this option just as regressive as a tax. However, the government could initially auction off allowances, which would be extremely valuable, and use the revenues to try to target those hardest hit by increased prices.

Both programs are flexible in that the amount of tax, emissions cap, or amount of allowances could be adjusted after implementation. Both programs are likely to have regressive impacts since they would raise consumer prices, and it remains to be seen how this problem might be resolved. The cap-and-trade program seems to be more politically acceptable to many lawmakers who fear anything resembling a tax increase, while many economists favor the carbon tax because it requires less bureaucracy to implement.

Senate Investigates Stock Options

The Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held a hearing Tuesday focusing on stock options and the "book-tax accounting gap." Corporations sometimes compensate employees (particularly executives) with options to buy stock at a set price. The employee can wait to exercise the option until after the value of the stock has increased beyond that price, thus enjoying a substantial benefit.

When stock options are exercised, employees report the difference between the value of the stock and the exercise price as taxable wages, and corporations take a corresponding tax deduction. Until recently, however, companies didn't have to reduce the profits they report to their shareholders by the cost of the stock options.

Many people, including us, complained that it didn't make sense for companies to treat stock options inconsistently for tax purposes versus shareholder-reporting purposes. As a result of these complaints, new rules now require companies to lower their "book" profits somewhat to take account of options. But the book write-offs are still considerably less than what they take as tax deductions. That's because the oddly-designed rules require the value of the stock options for book purposes to be calculated — or guessed at — when the options are issued, while the tax deductions reflect the actual value when the options are exercised.

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), chair of the subcommittee, stated in a press release that "Companies pay their executives with stock options in part because, right now, those stock options often generate huge tax deductions that are 2, 3, even 10 times larger than the stock option expense shown on the company books." According to calculations made by his staff using IRS data, firms deducted $43 billion that was not included in financial books in this manner between December 2004 to June 2005. He argued that this is especially problematic now because it seems to fuel the widening difference in pay for executives compared to rank and file workers. Levin said he plans to introduce legislation this fall to require companies to treat stock options the same for both book and tax purposes.

Other Tax Justice News

New Jersey's Ineffective Bribes

Eighty million dollars for Verizon? Thirty-seven million dollars for Citigroup? Sounds almost like a modern version of Monopoly, doesn't it?

Well, as a recent New York Times op-ed by New Jersey Policy Perspective's Jon Shure points out, those are just two of the tax breaks that the Garden State has doled out to major corporations since the mid-1990s. Yet, as New Jersey's experience with MSNBC suggests, the corporations that benefit from this largesse often don't live up to their end of the bargain.

Good Jobs First has long been making that very point - and this week introduced a new on-line tool to help the public keep track of all of the subsidies that one particular corporation, Wal-Mart, is receiving from states and localities around the country. See www.walmartsubsidywatch.org to learn more.

Opportunity for Ohio to Save Money

Newly elected Ohio Governor Ted Strickland has proposed expanding the state's means-tested homestead exemption by eliminating the exemption's current income limits. This year, the homestead exemption is only available for seniors and the disabled with incomes less than $27,000; the benefit of the exemption decreases as incomes grow closer to $27,000. Governor Strickland's plan would provide a blanket property tax exemption for the first $25,000 of a property's market value for elderly and disabled homeowners at all income levels. This week, Policy Matters Ohio and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy teamed up to analyze the impact of the Governor's proposal and also to offer less expensive alternatives that provide targeted tax relief - instead of simply providing an exemption that goes to everyone regardless of their need. By targeting property tax relief to select homeowners, Ohio could save $118 million annually. To read the full Policy Matters Ohio report click here.

Tax Holiday for Hurricane Help?

June brings the start of a new hurricane season, and this year some Gulf states are turning to a new tool to try to help residents cope: the tax code. This week is host to Florida's third annual sales tax holiday on hurricane preparedness supplies. Louisiana offered a temporary sales tax holiday in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last year, and now some lawmakers are pushing to make it an annual event. However, it is not known how much, if any, benefit shoppers receive from such sales tax holidays. Why would a store offer a 10% discount when shoppers are coming in to avoid paying the four percent state sales tax? Given the serious nature of hurricanes, the burden of proof is on lawmakers to show that this holiday will do what they say it will. People in the Gulf states deserve more than a three-day gimmick.