Tax Justice Digest stories about Arizona
The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute issued a report adding up the costs of the state House's handiwork related to taxes this year and found that the tax bills passed this session would cost as much as $113 million in FY 2009, $473 million in FY 2010, and $798 million in FY 2011.
Coincidentally, the Oklahoma Senate passed a proposed constitutional amendment last week also dealing with caps on increases in a home's taxable value. In this case, the cap would be decreased from 5% to 3% (the 5% cap would remain intact for businesses). Assessment value caps of this sort have recently received much attention in Florida. The unfair way in which these caps provide the greatest relief to long-time residents (creating vastly different property tax bills between neighbors with similar houses) recently drove Florida residents to amend their constitution to patch over the problem in a very imperfect way.
Rounding out the recent trend in debating poorly reasoned property tax cuts is Arizona, where the House narrowly approved a measure to permanently repeal a portion of the property tax that is currently suspended. Allowing the tax to take effect again would raise about $250 million annually for the state, significantly reducing the projected $1.2 billion revenue shortfall for the current fiscal year. If the plan passes, cuts in public services could be the result.
Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano last week affixed her signature to HB 2515, an innovative piece of legislation aimed at curbing self-destructive tax incentive competition among municipalities in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The new law will reduce state-shared revenue to any city or town entirely in Maricopa or Pinal Counties that provides tax giveaways for retail development. While the new law won't undo such abuses as the $100 million tax break previously granted for Phoenix's CityNorth development, it could serve as a model for other states seeking to put an end to this inefficient and unsound approach to economic development.
Meanwhile, in
Earlier this year, members of the Arizona business community formed a new organization - the Transportation and Infrastructure Moving AZ's Economy or TIME Coalition - to advocate for additional transportation funding and to push for a ballot initiative to generate the revenue necessary to support that funding. At first, that may sound like business leaders acting in a fiscally responsible way to ensure that the state invests in the public structures on which all Arizonans rely.
Two details might make you think otherwise. First, the taxes that the Coalition would like to see raised through the initiative - the general sales tax and the gasoline tax - would fall disproportionately on low- and moderate-income people. Second, as the Arizona Republic points out, some of the members of the TIME Coalition - such as the Arizona Chamber of Commerce - are at the same time actively lobbying for the acceleration of tax cuts for commercial and industrial property and the outright repeal of the currently-suspended equalization assistance property tax. So, while Arizona may need to make critical public investments to foster economic growth and to improve the quality of life in the state, don't expect businesses to pony up - in their view, that's just for working people.
Tax legislation is often messy and complicated. This presents a challenge for those seeking to change state tax systems through ballot initiatives or referenda: how can these complex tax issues be boiled down to a simple and accurate description that voters will be able to read and understand while in the voting booth? Arizona's latest ballot-initiative snafu illustrates this difficulty. Health-care advocates successfully gathered signatures last summer for an 80-cents-per-pack cigarette tax hike — but what appeared on Arizona voters' November ballots was a 0.8 cent tax, which was approved by a 53% majority. This would provide one-one-hundredth of the revenue these advocates sought. The state's Attorney General has ruled, oddly, that the 80-cent tax can be collected anyway, but RJ Reynolds is considering filing a suit to prevent the implementation of this tax hike. Read more about it on the Talking Taxes weblog.
While the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives (and apparently also the Senate) on Tuesday has has given new hope to advocates of progressive tax policies at the federal level, the results of ballot initiatives across the country indicate that state tax policy is also headed in a progressive direction.
In the three states where they were on the ballot, voters rejected TABOR proposals, which involve artificial tax and spending caps that would cut services drastically over several years. Washington State defeated repeal of its estate tax. Several states also rejected initiatives to increase school funding which, while based on the best intentions, were not responsible fiscal policy. Two of four ballot proposals to hike cigarette taxes were approved and the night also brought a mixed bag of results for property tax caps.
Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR):
Maine - Question 1 - FAILED
Nebraska - Initiative 423 - FAILED
Oregon - Measure 48 - FAILED
Voters in three states soundly rejected tax- and spending-cap proposals modeled after Colorado's so-called "Taxpayers Bill of Rights" (TABOR). Apparently people in these three states had too many concerns over the damage caused by TABOR in Colorado.
Property Tax Caps:
Arizona - Proposition 101 - PASSED - tightening existing caps on growth in local property tax levies.
Georgia - Referendum D - PASSED - exempting seniors at all income levels from the statewide property tax (a small part of overall Georgia property taxes. (The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute evaluates this idea here.)
South Carolina - Amendment Question 4 - PASSED - capping growth of properties' assessed value for tax purposes. The State newspaper explains why the cap would be counterproductive.
South Dakota - Amendment D - FAILED - capping the allowable growth in taxable value for homes, taking a page from California's Proposition 13 playbook. (The Aberdeen American News explains why this is bad policy here - and asks tough questions about whether lawmakers have shirked their duties by shunting this complicated decision off to voters.)
Tennessee - Amendment 2 - PASSED - allowing (but not requiring) local governments to enact senior-citizens property tax freezes.
Arizona's property tax limit will restrict property tax growth for all taxpayers in a given district. South Dakota's proposal was fortunately defeated. It would have offered help only to families whose property is rapidly becoming more valuable, and those families are rarely the neediest. Georgia's is not targeted at those who need help but would give tax cuts to seniors at all income levels. The Tennesse initiative, which passed, is a reasonable tool for localities to use, at their option, to target help towards those seniors who need it.
Cigarette Tax Increase:
Arizona - Proposition 203 - PASSED - increase in cigarette tax from $1.18 to $1.98 to fund early education and childrens' health screenings.
California - Proposition 86 - FAILED - increasing the cigarette tax by $2.60 a pack to pay for health care (from $.87 to $3.47)
Missouri - Amendment 3 - FAILED - increasing cigarette tax from 17 cents to 97 cents
South Dakota - Initiated Measure 2 - PASSED - increasing cigarette tax from 53 cents to $1.53.
While many progressive activists and organizations support raising cigarette taxes to fund worthy services and projects, the cigarette tax is essentially regressive and is an unreliable revenue source since it is shrinking.
State Estate Tax Repeal:
Washington - Initiative 920 - FAILED
Complementing the heated debate over the federal estate tax has been this lesser noticed debate over Washington Stats's own estate tax which funds smaller classroom size, assistance for low-income students and other education purposes. Washingtonians decided it was a tax worth keeping.
Revenue for Education:
Alabama - Amendment 2 - PASSED - requiring that every school district in the state provide at least 10 mills of property tax for local schools.
California - Proposition 88 - FAILED - would impose a regressive "parcel tax" of $50 on each parcel of property in the state to help fund education
Idaho - Proposition 1 - FAILED - requiring the legislature to spend an additional $220 million a year on education - and requiring the legislature to come up with an (unidentified) revenue stream to pay for it.
Michigan - Proposal 5 - FAILED - mandating annual increases in state education spending, tied to inflation - but without specifying a funding source. The Michigan League for Human Services explains why this is a bad idea.
Voters made wise choices on education spending. The initiative in California would have raised revenue in a regressive way, while the initiatives in Idaho and Michigan sought to increase education spending without providing any revenue source. Alabama's Amendment 2 takes an approach that is both responsible and progressive.
Income Taxes:
Oregon - Measure 41 - FAILED - creating an alternative method of calculating state income taxes.
Measure 41 was an ill-conceived proposal to allow wealthier Oregonians the option of claiming the same personal exemptions allowed under federal tax rules and would have bypassed a majority of Oregon seniors and would offer little to most low-income Oregonians of all ages.
Other Ballot Measures:
California - Proposition 87 - FAILED - would impose a tax on oil production and use all the revenue to reduce the state's reliance on fossil fuels and encourage the use of renewable energy
California - Proposition 89 - FAILED - using a corporate income tax hike to provide public funding for elections
South Dakota - Initiated Measure 7 - FAILED - repealing the state's video lottery - proceeds of which are used to cut local property taxes
South Dakota - Initiated Measure 8 - FAILED - repealing 4 percent tax on cell phone users.
A voter initiative in Missouri to increase the cigarette tax by 80 cents is back on the November ballot. At first, the ballot was declared invalid after many of the signatures were disqualified. However, the Cole County Circuit Court has overturned that decision, and the voters will now decide the issue this fall. The initiative is joined at the polls this fall by similar measures in Arizona and California. Many of the proponents of these measures argue that they reduce smoking. However, cigarette taxes are very regressive, forcing low-income smokers to pay a much higher percentage of their income in cigarette taxes than high-income smokers. A 2005 policy brief by ITEP showed that cigarette taxes are ten times more burdensome for low-income smokers than for the wealthy.
Further, both Arizona and California plan to use the revenue generated by this bill to pay for public services unrelated to smoking. As Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, points out: "Most will agree this is a regressive tax[...] We all like to beat up on smokers, but if the program truly benefits all families, including upper class, then you're taxing blue-collar people to pay for everyone." Reducing smoking rates is a laudable goal, but lawmakers must find a way to do so that is fair and equitable.
