Tax Justice Digest stories about Oklahoma
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.
This week the Community Action Project blasted the decision by Oklahoma policy makers to use a temporary surge in revenue to justify permanent, unfair tax cuts. CAP says that when voting on the tax cut proposals, legislators did so "knowing only the short-term fiscal impact and without the information that could allow them to evaluate the long-term fiscal sustainability of their choices." The question before legislators now is whether or not to repeal the tax cuts that were scheduled to take place in 2008. Last fall, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published a study which takes a closer look at specific states that enacted tax cuts in 2006 and highlights the potential damages from "tax cuts on layaway."
Kiplinger reports that business are expected "to mount pitched battles to defeat" TABOR-esque spending tax cap initiatives in Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, and Oregon. In fact, there's a concerted effort forming in Oklahoma that is actually being lead by business groups. The Chairman of Tulsa's Chamber of Commerce was even quoted as saying that TABOR would be a "train wreck" for Oklahoma.
In Oklahoma, Republican and Democratic leaders are feuding over how to dispose of the state's budget surplus, with Republicans pushing for cuts in the top income tax rate and Democrats pushing for an increase in the stand deduction. An analysis by Oklahoma's Community Action Project shows that the standard deduction would be a much better deal for most Oklahomans.
