Naughty

Michigan’s legislature and Governor Snyder top the naughty list by giving away more than $1.6 billion in tax cuts for business and paying for it with tax increases on low-and middle-income working and retired families.

Florida continued to dole out more corporate pork this year, including a property tax break that happens to benefit huge commercial land owners, like Disney World and Florida Power and Light, and other corporations (that also happen to be major donors to the state’s Republican governor and legislative majority party).

Minnesota’s legislature missed an opportunity to do the right thing when it rejected a tax increase on the state’s wealthiest residents. The plan was proposed by Governor Dayton and supported by 63 percent of Minnesotans over the alternative, which was cuts to spending on education, health care and other vital public services.

Anti-tax activists in Missouri were hard at work again. This year they were collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would eliminate the state’s personal income tax and replace it with a broadened and increased sales tax.

Nice

Connecticut’s Governor Malloy and the legislature adopted a $1.4 billion tax increase that improved tax fairness in the state and protected public investments like education and health care.  Most notably, the state added an Earned Income Tax Credit, a significant tax break for low-income working families.

District of Columbia lawmakers greatly reduced the ability of corporations to dodge their fair share of taxes by adopting combined reporting (which makes it harder to hide profits in other states) and a higher corporate minimum tax. The Council also temporarily increased taxes for individuals making more than $350,000 a year and limited itemized deductions, which are most often taken by high income filers.

Hawaii lawmakers also limited upside-down tax giveaways (itemized deductions) for their state’s richest residents and passed other tax changes to raise much needed revenue.

A Little Bit Naughty and Nice

New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo reversed his campaign vow not to raise taxes and supported a tax increase on residents earning more than $2 million a year.   The plan, passed by the legislature, also included a tax break for those with income under $300,000.

However, New York lawmakers passed the governor’s cap on property taxes this summer, which is predictably creating crises and forcing dramatic cuts in local education, medical, and public safety services.

Illinois raised significant revenue earlier in the year through temporary personal and corporate income tax rate increases, all designed to stave off harsh spending cuts, but then turned right around and gave away hundreds of millions of dollars to Sears and CME, allegedly to keep them in the state.

The Mercatus Center, a think tank run by “America’s Hottest Economist,” has attempted to quantify the level of “freedom” enjoyed within each state.  If this sounds impossible, that’s because it is.  A quick look at the “taxes” component of each state’s “freedom score” should make this very clear.

According to the Center, freedom requires that “individuals should be allowed to dispose of their lives, liberties, and properties as they see fit, as long as they do not infringe on the rights of others.”  This, according to the study, requires “a deep distrust of taxation.”

In order to measure the impact of taxes on freedom, the Center does what it correctly describes as a “simple” calculation: it tallies up the size of all tax revenues (with a few exceptions) as a share of the state’s economy.  Basically, more tax revenue means less freedom under the authors’ assumptions — and taxes account for about 10 percent of each state’s overall “freedom score.”  But as everybody outside the Mercatus Center knows, taxes are never this simple.

For starters, states routinely use their tax codes to encourage (and discourage) a huge range of decisions that affect our day-to-day lives.  Most states, for example, offer strings-attached tax incentives designed to spur specific companies into building factories within their borders.  Under the Mercatus Center’s assumptions, a state that uses its tax code to subsidize private sector construction will actually score better on the “freedom” index than an otherwise identical state, simply because the subsidy cuts into its revenue collections.  In reality, however, a state without the subsidy offers a freer and more level playing field with “unhampered markets,” as the authors put it.

Of course, factory construction isn’t the only area where the government tries to manipulate behavior with special breaks.  States offer special tax breaks for everything from competing in a livestock show to purchasing binoculars — each of which the Mercatus Center’s calculations would classify as “freedom enhancing.”

Taxes can also affect freedom in unintentional ways.  For example, a handful of states have placed caps on the rate at which a homeowner’s property tax bill can grow each year.  These tax caps result in huge tax cuts for many homeowners, especially those that have lived in their homes for many years.  Obviously, under the Mercatus Center’s assumptions, these caps are big freedom enhancers.  In reality, however, the opposite is true.

An article in the March 2011 edition of the National Tax Journal showed what anecdotes from homeowners have always suggested: these caps result in a “lock-in effect” where residents are either unable or unwilling to leave their homes, out of fear of losing the tax savings they’ve accumulated over many years.  “Locking” residents into their homes with convoluted property tax breaks is hardly the definition of a free society.  But don’t count on the Mercatus Center’s “freedom index” being able to capture these types of nuanced, but vitally important implications of state tax policies.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the Mercatus index also falls short in its failure to examine who pays taxes.   This is most obvious in the 48th and 49th place fiscal policy rankings received by Hawaii and Alaska, respectively. 

Hawaii’s sales and excise tax revenues are very robust, in large part because of the huge quantities of hotel rooms, car rentals, tours, and souvenirs that are sold to out-of-state tourists.  Similarly, a significant amount of Alaska’s tax revenue (even excluding severance taxes, which the study omits) comes from multinational oil companies. 

In each of these states, many tax dollars flow into state coffers from outside the state — and while every one of those dollars sinks the state lower in the Mercatus “freedom index,” it has little if any impact on the freedom of anybody living within those states’ borders.  For this reason alone, readers should hesitate before taking the authors’ advice that “individuals can use the data to plan a move or retirement.”

At the end of the day, how taxes are collected is equally if not more important than how much taxes are collected.  Economists recognized this a long time ago when they discovered the tax policy principle of “neutrality,”  which basically means that tax systems should interfere with our decisions as little as possible.  A tax system that doesn’t generate much revenue can still reduce our freedom in important ways if it’s applied in a narrow and discriminatory fashion.  Anybody interested in enhancing freedom through tax reform should be focused on the plethora of special breaks contained in state systems — not the overall revenue yield of those systems.

Last week the Hawaii legislature sent Governor Neil Abercrombie a package of tax changes designed to help close the state’s yawning budget gap.  Among its most notable components are the partial repeal of the state’s nonsensical deduction for state income taxes paid, and a new limitation on itemized deductions taken by wealthy taxpayers.  Both of these changes will help mitigate the upside-down, regressive nature of Hawaii’s itemized deductions — a move that ITEP has urged many states to consider.

If Governor Abercrombie signs the legislature’s tax package into law — as he is expected to do — Hawaii will become the first state in the nation to place a cap on the overall size of itemized deductions. 

Married taxpayers earning over $200,000 per year will be prevented from sheltering more than $50,000 of their income from tax via itemized deductions, while single taxpayers earning over $100,000 will be limited to a $25,000 deduction. 

ITEP recommended a similar option in its August 2010 “Writing Off Tax Giveaways” report, and the Hawaii legislature actually passed a cap of this type last year that was eventually vetoed by then-Governor Linda Lingle.

If this bill becomes law, itemizers will still be able to take a deduction much larger than the $2,000 per-spouse “standard deduction” enjoyed by many Hawaii residents.  Nonetheless, the cap will go a long way toward reducing tax regressivity while also raising much-needed revenue for the state.

Hawaii’s legislature chose to collect additional revenue from itemized deduction reform by partially repealing the deduction for state income taxes paid.  Hawaii residents earning over $200,000 per year (or $100,000 in the case of a single filer) will be unable to take this deduction, while taxpayers earning under that amount will continue to benefit. 

Allowing taxpayers to deduct their state taxes on their state tax forms is a bizarre policy with no real rationale.  Instead, it exists only because Hawaii has “coupled” its itemized deduction laws too closely to federal rules, where the state tax deduction is used as a form of revenue-sharing. 

Gov. Neil Abercrombie rightly called the state tax deduction an “absurdity” in his State of the State address.  The vast majority of states have already abandoned the state income tax deduction — most recently in New Mexico and Rhode Island, both of which repealed the deduction in 2010.

In addition to these progressive reforms, the legislature’s plan also raises significant revenue by temporarily suspending various sales tax exemptions for business activities, and by delaying a scheduled increase in the state’s standard deduction and personal exemption.  Rental car taxes, vehicle registration fees, and the vehicle weight tax are also slated to rise under the legislature’s plan.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of the final package is that it does not include the Governor’s proposal to eliminate the pension exemption for middle- and high-income retirees.  This already costly tax break is almost certain to grow rapidly in size as Hawaii’s population advances in age.  Moreover, this break creates inequities between Hawaii residents with different forms of income, offering nothing to low-income, elderly residents that must continue to work in order to make ends meet.

But while the legislature deserves some criticism for failing to rein-in costly retiree tax breaks, it also deserves much praise for including revenues as part of its budget solution, and in particular for using itemized deduction reform as tool for enhancing the fairness and adequacy of Hawaii’s tax system.

Last week Illinois joined New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island by enacting legislation requiring Amazon.com and other online retailers working with in-state affiliates to collect sales taxes.  Arkansas’s Senate and Vermont’s House recently passed similar legislation, and Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, Mississippi, and New Mexico are considering doing the same.  Interestingly, lawmakers in each of these states are being spurred to do the right thing by major retailers like Wal-Mart, Sears, and Barnes & Noble.

In most states, Amazon and other online retailers are not currently required to collect sales taxes unless they have a “physical presence” in the state, though consumers are still required to remit the tax themselves.  Unfortunately, very few consumers actually pay the sales taxes they owe on online purchases — in California, for example, unpaid taxes on internet and catalog sales are estimated to cost the state as much as $1.15 billion per year.

The so-called “Amazon laws” recently adopted in Illinois, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island are all designed to limit this form of tax evasion by broadening the class of online retailers that must pay sales taxes.  Specifically, under these new laws, any retailer partnering with in-state affiliate merchants is required to pay sales taxes on purchases made by residents of that state.

Up until recently, the reaction to these laws has been mostly hostile.  Grover Norquist has branded them a (gasp) “tax increase,” despite the fact that they’re designed only to reduce illegal tax evasion.  More importantly, Amazon has challenged the New York law in court, and has ended relationships with affiliates in North Carolina and Rhode Island in order to avoid having to pay sales taxes on sales made within those states.  Amazon has also promised to severe ties with its Illinois affiliates, and has threatened to do the same in California if a similar law is adopted there.  These tactics mirror a recent decision by Amazon to shut down a Texas-based distribution center in order to avoid having to remit taxes in that state as well.

But Amazon may not be able to bully state lawmakers for much longer.  Since New York passed its so-called “Amazon law” in 2008, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and now Illinois have already followed suit despite all the threats.  And it appears that Arkansas and Vermont may very well do the same — as proposals to enact Amazon laws in each of those states have already made it through one legislative chamber.  In addition, at least seven other states (listed in the opening paragraph) have similar legislation pending.

According to State Tax Notes (subscription required), Wal-Mart, Sears, and Barnes & Noble are each attempting to partner with affiliate merchants recently dropped by Amazon.  Even more importantly, several of the large retail companies (like Wal-Mart, Target and Home Depot) are joining forces to lobby in favor of Amazon laws. These companies’ interest is in large part due to the fact that they already have to remit sales taxes in the vast majority of states because of the “physical presence” created by their large networks of “brick and mortar” stores.  If more traditional retailers begin to voice support for Amazon laws, the progress already being made on this issue is likely to accelerate.

For more background information on the Amazon.com tax controversy, check out this helpful report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

We've written before that state governments provide a wide array of tax breaks for their elderly residents. Almost every state levying an income tax now allows some form of exemption or credit for its over-65 citizens that is unavailable to non-elderly taxpayers. But many states have enacted poorly-targeted, unnecessarily expensive elderly tax breaks that make state tax systems less sustainable and less fair. These breaks are being reconsidered in Illinois, Michigan, and Hawaii.

One of the most egregious examples of the special treatment retirees receive is the Illinois income tax exemption for all retirement income. But this exemption is getting more and more attention. Senate President John Cullerton recently said, “It would just be a matter of fairness” to tax this income.

The Chicago Tribune joins us in applauding Cullerton for raising this issue. “Illinois needs a talk about revising tax policies and rethinking exemptions," the Tribune editorializes. "Not to grab more from taxpayers, but to broaden the tax base as a matter of fairness. Why should the working family making $50,000 a year pay a tax that the retiree getting $100,000 a year avoids? Credit Cullerton for thinking creatively — and out loud. ”

Eliminating senior tax preferences is also receiving attention in Michigan, where Governor Rick Snyder has proposed scrapping the state’s generous exemptions for pensions, annuities, and various other types of retirement income.  Unfortunately, Snyder has paired this change with an elimination of the state’s EITC — a proposal that has contributed greatly to the overall regressivity of Snyder’s personal income tax changes.  Retaining the EITC and means-testing Michigan’s pension breaks, rather than eliminating them entirely, could greatly reduce the regressivity of Snyder’s plan. 
 
Finally, in Hawaii, a proposal to tax pensions earned by taxpayers with incomes over $100,000 (or $200,000 for married filers) recently passed the House.  Unlike in Michigan, this plan both includes protections for low-income retirees, and uses the revenue it would generate in order to close the state’s budget gap.

It seems that each week brings another round of regressive tax proposals from the states, but there are a few bright spots. As previously reported, the governors in Connecticut, Hawaii and Minnesota have been strong proponents for taking a balanced approach to their state’s budget gaps and have unabashedly supported raising revenue in mostly reform-minded and progressive ways.  More details emerged this week on the Connecticut and Minnesota governors’ revenue-raising proposals.   Also, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, who recently backed a successful initiative to increase the state’s flat personal income tax rate, started sending positive messages this week about the need to make his state’s tax system fairer.

On Wednesday, Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy released his plan to deal a budget gap exceeding $3 billion. As promised, his plan would not to rely solely on spending cuts to close the gap. He offered a $1.5 billion package of new revenues including reforms to the personal income tax, sales tax, business taxes, and estate tax.
  
Under his plan, the state’s personal income tax would expand from 3 to 8 brackets, the top marginal rate would increase from 6.5 to 6.7 percent, and the bottom marginal rate of 3 percent would phase out for high-income earners.  The plan also eliminates an existing property tax credit which is most beneficial to middle-income families. 

Perhaps most significantly, Governor Malloy would buck a recent trend by adding a refundable state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) set at 30 percent of the federal program.  If enacted, Connecticut would become the 26th state to have an EITC.
 
Governor Malloy also proposed expanding the sales tax base by taxing several services, including pet grooming, boat repairs and hair cuts, eliminating the exemption on clothing under $50, and imposing an additional 3 percent sales tax on “luxury items.  The state sales tax rate would increase from 6 to 6.25 percent. 

Governor Malloy also supports positive changes to business taxation including adopting what is known as the "throwback rule," which mandates that sales into other states or to the federal government that are not taxable will be “thrown back” into the state of origin for tax purposes.  His plan would improve the estate tax by lowering the taxable estate threshold from $3.5 million to $2 million.

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton ran on a pro-tax platform, promising to increase taxes on his state’s wealthiest households in order to stave off massive spending reductions.  Governor Dayton released a plan this week to raise $4.1 billion in new revenues over the next two years to help solve a $6.2 billion budget shortfall.   Sticking to his campaign pledge, the majority of the new revenue would be raised from the wealthiest 5 percent of taxpayers in the state. The plan would add a new top income tax bracket, charge a 3 percent surtax on filers with taxable income above $500,000, and add a new statewide property tax on homes valued at more than $1 million.

The Minnesota Budget Project had the following to say about Governor Dayton’s proposal: “The Governor’s tax proposal seeks to add balance to the state’s tax system. Over time, the state has cut progressive taxes (like the income tax) during good times and increased regressive taxes (like property taxes) during the bad times. These policy changes, combined with economic trends, have led to a tax system that has shifted more of the responsibility for funding state and local services on to low- and moderate-income Minnesotans. People at the highest income levels pay a smaller share of their income in state and local taxes (8.9 percent) than the average for all Minnesotans (11.2 percent).”

Illinois lawmakers should be applauded for temporarily raising the state’s flat income tax rate from 3 to 5 percent in January to help fill a $15 billion budget gap. However, they missed an opportunity to fix the state’s broken, outdated, and unfair tax system rather than just raise rates.  But the opportunity may still be available.  This week, Governor Pat Quinn asked state lawmakers to consider modernizing the tax system and making it fairer.  He did not offer specific suggestions on how to achieve this goal, but explained that Illinois’ tax system is regressive, requiring more from its poorest residents than from the rich. 

In response to his call for reform, some Democratic lawmakers offered a few suggestions, including moving the state to a graduated income tax, expanding the sales tax base to include services, and relying less on property taxes to pay for schools.

The last place you would ever expect a discussion of tax policy is in the sea of Super Bowl commercials about beer, cars, and Doritos, yet the organization Americans Against Food Taxes spent over $3 million to change that last Sunday.

The ad, called “Give Me a Break”, features a nice woman shopping in a grocery store,  explaining how she does not want the government interfering with her personal life by attempting to place taxes on soda, juice, or even flavored water. The goal of the ad is to portray objections to soda taxes as if they are grounded in the concerns of ordinary Americans.

But Americans Against Food Taxes is anything but a grassroots organization. Its funding comes from a coalition of corporate interests including Coca-Cola, McDonalds and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

It is easy to understand why these groups are concerned about soda taxes, which were once considered a way to help pay for health care reform. The entire purpose of these taxes is to discourage the consumption of their products. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains in making the case for a soda tax, such a tax could be used to dramatically reduce obesity and health care costs and produce better health outcomes across the nation. Adding to this, the revenue raised could be dedicated to funding health care programs, which could further improve the general welfare.

These taxes may spread, at least at the state level.  In its analysis of the ad, Politifact verifies the ad’s claim that politicians are planning to impose additional taxes on soda and other groceries, writing that “legislators have introduced bills to impose or raise the tax on sodas and/or snack foods in Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia.”

It's true that taxes on food generally are regressive, and taxes on sugary drinks are no exception according to a recent study. It's a bad idea to rely on this sort of tax purely to raise revenue, but if the goal of the tax is to change behavior for health reasons, then such a tax might be a reasonable tool for social policy. We have often said the same about cigarette taxes, which are a bad way to raise revenue but a reasonable way to discourage an unhealthy behavior.

With so many states considering soda taxes and the corporate interests revving up their own campaign, the “Give Me a Break” ad may just be the opening shot in the big food tax battles to come.

Governors are in the midst of crafting their budget proposals for next year, and many state leaders continue to grapple with historic budget shortfalls due to lagging revenue recovery and a high demand for public services.  In 2009 and 2010, most states balanced their budgets with a mix of temporary and permanent tax increases, significant federal assistance, and spending cuts.  This year, state revenues continue to lag, many of the temporary tax increases are set to expire, and federal stimulus assistance will dry up, yet the need for quality education, safe communities, affordable health care, public transit and well-maintained roads has not diminished.

As the Tax Justice Digest has previously noted, so far this year we have seen mostly a slew of bad proposals from state leaders. Many states are offering tax breaks to corporations and wealthy households and refusing to consider new taxes, while choosing to cut state spending to historically low and damaging levels. A few governors, however, have recently bucked the cuts-only trend and have made it clear that taxes must be a part of the solution.
 
In Connecticut, newly elected Governor Dannel Malloy plans to address the state’s $3.7 billion budget shortfall with an almost equal share of spending cuts ($2 billion) and tax increases ($1.7 billion).   While the details of his tax plan will not be unveiled until February, he is likely to support eliminating a majority of the state’s sales tax exemptions as one part of his revenue raising plan.

Hawaii’s new governor, Neil Abercrombie, has also embraced the need to raise new revenues as part of a budget-fixing compromise.  Governor Abercrombie proposed raising $279 million, including taxes on soda, alcohol, and time-shares. Most significantly, Abercrombie would tax pension income (which is generally exempt from taxation currently) for taxpayers with incomes over $50,000, raising around $114 million a year.  He also supports eliminating the state deduction for state taxes, a smart reform measure that would raise $70 million a year.  

North Carolina lawmakers addressed their budget crisis in the previous two years in part with $1.3 billion in temporary taxes which are set to expire this year.  For months, Governor Bev Perdue opposed extending the taxes for another year despite a shortfall of nearly $4 billion.  She recently changed her tune, and is now considering including an extension of these temporary tax increases (a 1 cent sales tax increase and income tax surcharge on high-income households and corporations) in her budget proposal in order to stave off massive cuts to K-12 education.

Republican lawmakers in four states — Wisconsin, Maine, New York, and Hawaii — are seeking to amend their state constitutions to require a two-thirds supermajority vote in each legislative chamber in order to raise taxes.  Each of these proposals would reduce the ability of these states to provide an adequate level of public services, and would make it significantly more difficult to enact real tax reform that wipes out wasteful tax deductions, exemptions, and credits.

These supermajority requirements would mean that even if state lawmakers representing 65 percent of a state's residents in both chambers, and the governor, all support a revenue increase, it still would not become law.

Besides being blatantly anti-democratic, the supermajority requirement to raise taxes would be particularly damaging during difficult economic times.  State revenues inevitably decline when the economy weakens, and dealing effectively with the resulting revenue shortfall requires a balanced approach relying on both higher taxes and cuts in state services.  A supermajority requirement would make striking this balance far more difficult.

Less obvious is the impact that supermajority requirements have on states’ abilities to reform their tax systems.  As CTJ has explained in the past, state supermajority requirements are one of the most important factors in biasing lawmakers toward pursuing their favorite policy goals via the tax code.  Supermajority requirements make it impossible for a simple majority of legislators to close a tax loophole unless they enlarge another loophole or lower tax rates in order to offset the resulting revenue gain. 

State lawmakers are well aware of the bias that already exists in favor of continuing tax breaks, and have begun crafting their favorite initiatives (e.g. energy subsidies, job-creation incentives, etc.) in the form of tax breaks in order to take advantage of this fact.  The result is the overly complicated, inefficient, and pork-laden tax codes you see in almost every state today.

Maine and Wisconsin are the only two states in the country that flipped from entirely Democratic control to entirely Republican control in last November’s election.  It’s no coincidence that these are also the two states most seriously considering a supermajority requirement.  In both cases, it took almost no time at all for Republicans to realize that a constitutional amendment of this type could allow them to continue implementing their anti-tax agendas long after they’ve been voted out of office.

In New York, a supermajority amendment has already passed the state Senate (along with an extremely ill-advised cap on state spending), though it’s likely to be greeted much less enthusiastically in the Democrat-led Assembly.  The proposal would also have to pass in the next legislature (which convenes two years from now), and be approved by voters before it would become a part of the state’s constitution.

Of the four states where supermajority amendments are being debated, Hawaii’s is by far the least likely to gain traction.  The Hawaii House’s 8 Republican legislators (out of a 51 person chamber) have floated the idea and encouraged the majority Democrats to fold it into their platform.  In a great example of Aloha Spirit, the Republicans have even been nice enough to insist that “Our caucus isn’t saying we need the credit.  What we’re saying is, we need the result.”  Hopefully, Hawaii Democrats — like the lawmakers in the other three states considering these amendments — will politely brush this proposal aside.

Earlier this week ITEP released A Capital Idea: Repealing State Tax Breaks for Capital Gains Would Ease Budget Woes and Improve Tax Fairness. The report takes a hard look at the eight states that currently give special treatment to capital gains income including: Arkansas, Hawaii, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Carolina, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

The report finds that the benefits of state capital gains tax breaks go almost exclusively to the very best off taxpayers. In fact, in the eight states highlighted, between 95 and 100 percent of the state tax cuts from these tax breaks goes to the richest 20 percent of taxpayers.

Capital gains tax breaks also come with a pretty large price tag.  In tax year 2010, these eight states will lose about $490 million due to these loopholes, with losses ranging from $14 million to $151 million per state. These revenue losses represent a substantial share of currently-forecast budget deficits in several of these states.

ITEP finds that these preferences are costly, inequitable, and ineffective, depriving states of millions of dollars in needed funds, benefitting almost exclusively the very wealthiest members of society, and failing to promote economic growth in the manner their proponents claim. State policymakers cannot afford to maintain these tax breaks any longer.

For a review of the most significant state tax actions across the country this year and a preview for what’s to come in 2011, check out ITEP’s new report, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: 2010 State Tax Policy Changes.

"Good" actions include progressive or reform-minded changes taken to close large state budget gaps. Eliminating personal income tax giveaways, expanding low-income credits, reinstating the estate tax, broadening the sales tax base, and reforming tax credits are all discussed.  

Among the “bad” actions state lawmakers took this year, which either worsened states’ already bleak fiscal outlook or increased taxes on middle-income households, are the repeal of needed tax increases, expanded capital gains tax breaks, and the suspension of property tax relief programs.  

“Ugly” changes raised taxes on the low-income families most affected by the economic downturn, drastically reduced state revenues in a poorly targeted manner, or stifled the ability of states and localities to raise needed revenues in the future. Reductions to low-income credits, permanently narrowing the personal income tax base, and new restrictions on the property tax fall into this category.

The report also includes a look at the state tax policy changes — good, bad, and ugly — that did not happen in 2010.  Some of the actions not taken would have significantly improved the fairness and adequacy of state tax systems, while others would have decimated state budgets and/or made state tax systems more regressive.

2011 promises to be as difficult a year as 2010 for state tax policy as lawmakers continue to grapple with historic budget shortfalls due to lagging revenues and a high demand for public services.  The report ends with a highlight of the state tax policy debates that are likely to play out across the country in the coming year.

Good Jobs First (GJF) released three new resources this week explaining how your state is doing when it comes to letting taxpayers know about the plethora of subsidies being given to private companies.  These resources couldn’t be more timely.  As GJF’s Executive Director Greg LeRoy explained, “with states being forced to make painful budget decisions, taxpayers expect economic development spending to be fair and transparent.”

The first of these three resources, Show Us The Subsidies, grades each state based on its subsidy disclosure practices.  GJF finds that while many states are making real improvements in subsidy disclosure, many others still lag far behind.  Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Ohio did the best in the country according to GJF, while thirteen states plus DC lack any disclosure at all and therefore earned an “F.”  Eighteen additional states earned a “D” or “D-minus.”

While the study includes cash grants, worker training programs, and loan guarantees, much of its focus is on tax code spending, or “ tax expenditures.”  Interestingly, disclosure of company-specific information appears to be quite common for state-level tax breaks.  Despite claims from business lobbyists that tax subsidies must be kept anonymous in order to protect trade secrets, GJF was able to find about 50 examples of tax credits, across about two dozen states, where company-specific information is released.  In response to the business lobby, GJF notes that “the sky has not fallen” in these states.

The second tool released by GJF this week, called Subsidy Tracker, is the first national search engine for state economic development subsidies.  By pulling together information from online sources, offline sources, and Freedom of Information Act requests, GJF has managed to create a searchable database covering more than 43,000 subsidy awards from 124 programs in 27 states.  Subsidy Tracker puts information that used to be difficult to find, nearly impossible to search through, or even previously unavailable, on the Internet all in one convenient location.  Tax credits, property tax abatements, cash grants, and numerous other types of subsidies are included in the Subsidy Tracker database.

Finally, GJF also released Accountable USA, a series of webpages for all 50 states, plus DC, that examines each state’s track record when it comes to subsidies.  Major “scams,” transparency ratings for key economic development programs, and profiles of a few significant economic development deals are included for each state.  Accountable USA also provides a detailed look at state-specific subsidies received by Wal-Mart.

These three resources from Good Jobs First will no doubt prove to be an invaluable resource for state lawmakers, advocates, media, and the general public as states continue their steady march toward improved subsidy disclosure.

Former US Representative Neil Abercrombie and Lt. Gov Duke Aiona are both running to be Hawaii’s next governor. Abercrombie recently said, “Government can and should work to spark the private economy, particularly during tough economic times. This has always been the case.” Aiona disagrees and says, “Government does not create jobs. We're not job creators," he said. "It's the private sector, as we know, that creates jobs. It's the small businesses that create jobs.”

Despite these seemingly different takes on the role of government, both candidates have committed to keeping spending at existing levels, not increasing the state sales tax and continuing to allow hotel room tax revenue to stay with the counties. 

Yet, all is not as amicable as it appears in the land of Aloha. Aiona has said that he would support reductions in both corporate and individual income taxes, if offsetting revenue were available, but it's hard to imagine where that revenue would come from without harming low- or middle-income families. So ultimately, there actually is a pretty clear choice between these two candidates on tax and revenue issues.

While blogging for the Wall Street Journal’s “Wealth Report”, Robert Frank recently highlighted a new study showing that the anti-tax crowd’s claims regarding “tax-driven wealth flight and wealth destruction may be exaggerated.”  Specifically, the study shows that despite all the fear the Journal tried to whip up regarding the “self-destructive” nature of raising state income tax rates on the wealthy, all of the states typically demonized as being “high-tax” actually saw the number of millionaires’ living within their borders rise substantially between 2009 and 2010.

The new study in question was released by Phoenix Marketing International, and shows that the number of households with more than $1 million in assets increased by 8.1% between 2009 and 2010. 

The study also shows that Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, and Connecticut have the highest concentration of millionaires in the country.  And despite the fact that each of these states recently raised their top income tax rate, each saw the number of millionaires living within their borders rise substantially between 2009 and 2010. 

Specifically, three of those states – Hawaii, Maryland, and Connecticut – saw their millionaire population grow at a rate even faster than the 8.1% national average.  New Jersey was only very slightly below average, having experienced a 7.4% gain in the number of millionaires between 2009 and 2010. 

On the flip side, two of the states experiencing the slowest growth in the number of millionaires – Florida and Nevada – levy no state income tax at all!

With this in mind, all the outrage exhibited by the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board regarding the “self-destructive,” “soak-the-rich theology” of “dedicated class warrior” and Maryland governor Martin O’Malley seems to have been very much off target.  After re-reading the Journal’s editorials, it does at least become clear why Frank labeled the debate “increasingly emotional.”

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time that the facts have run counter to the Journal’s (or Grover Norquist's) gloom and doom predictions regarding higher taxes on the rich.  Both CTJ and ITEP have in the past taken the time to point out the Journal’s factual errors and other exaggerations on this issue.  And in fact, Frank has even helped to highlight some of ITEP’s work in this area on at least one occasion.

One can only hope that the Journal will begin reading their own bloggers’ work and begin to temper their rhetoric next time around.  After all, as Frank’s blog post explains, “that demographics and economics matter more than taxes in increasing and retaining wealth may seem like an obvious point.”  But ultimately, we wouldn’t recommend holding your breath waiting for the Journal to acknowledge it.

ITEP’s new report, Credit Where Credit is (Over) Due, examines four proven state tax reforms that can assist families living in poverty. They include refundable state Earned Income Tax Credits, property tax circuit breakers, targeted low-income credits, and child-related tax credits. The report also takes stock of current anti-poverty policies in each of the states and offers suggested policy reforms.

Earlier this month, the US Census Bureau released new data showing that the national poverty rate increased from 13.2 percent to 14.3 percent in 2009.  Faced with a slow and unresponsive economy, low-income families are finding it increasingly difficult to find decent jobs that can adequately provide for their families.

Most states have regressive tax systems which exacerbate this situation by imposing higher effective tax rates on low-income families than on wealthy ones, making it even harder for low-wage workers to move above the poverty line and achieve economic security. Although state tax policy has so far created an uneven playing field for low-income families, state governments can respond to rising poverty by alleviating some of the economic hardship on low-income families through targeted anti-poverty tax reforms.

One important policy available to lawmakers is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The credit is widely recognized as an effective anti-poverty strategy, lifting roughly five million people each year above the federal poverty line.  Twenty-four states plus the District of Columbia provide state EITCs, modeled on the federal credit, which help to offset the impact of regressive state and local taxes.  The report recommends that states with EITCs consider expanding the credit and that other states consider introducing a refundable EITC to help alleviate poverty.

The second policy ITEP describes is property tax "circuit breakers." These programs offer tax credits to homeowners and renters who pay more than a certain percentage of their income in property tax.  But the credits are often only available to the elderly or disabled.  The report suggests expanding the availability of the credit to include all low-income families.

Next ITEP describes refundable low-income credits, which are a good compliment to state EITCs in part because the EITC is not adequate for older adults and adults without children.  Some states have structured their low-income credits to ensure income earners below a certain threshold do not owe income taxes. Other states have designed low-income tax credits to assist in offsetting the impact of general sales taxes or specifically the sales tax on food.  The report recommends that lawmakers expand (or create if they don’t already exist) refundable low-income tax credits.

The final anti-poverty strategy that ITEP discusses are child-related tax credits.  The new US Census numbers show that one in five children are currently living in poverty. The report recommends consideration of these tax credits, which can be used to offset child care and other expenses for parents.