Comments on: Ting: Split the Property Tax Rolls to Increase Fairness

By: Philip

Philip — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:16:23 +0000

Commercial landlords will not pay this huge tax increase, commercial tenants will. I’m sure restaurants, stores, and music clubs will be delighted to pay their ‘fair share”, and that this will have no effect at all on the gargantuan profits they continue to reap at the expense of the poor.

By: Michael Jaffe

Michael Jaffe — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 13:43:26 +0000

The voters of California have sent a strong message to the legislature that we are fed up with their economic governance. In this climate, the possibility that these same voters would now give these same legislators yet more money is absurd. Voter skepticism will have to be overcome before legislators get a nickel more in taxes – at least from me.

By: PlanetSantaBarbara.Com

PlanetSantaBarbara.Com — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:05:05 +0000

As Mike Stoker, 35th assy candidate says, “we don’t have a tax revenue problem, we have a spending problem.” Seriously folks, we should be talking about cutting taxes for everyone, and cutting spending on administration.

The state makes it extremely difficult for businesses and even counties to do business with bizarre or outdated rules for reimbursement for expenses.

Elementary, middle and high school administration is like 10 % of their budget. Can we cut that to 3 percent?

How about getting college academics off their perch and tell them they have to actually TEACH instead of having non-tenured people do the work while they continue research. I’m not saying stop your research, just cut back 10 percent and teach. That alone would pull us out of our education budget crisis. Where is the academic heart? Self-enrichment or student education? Note: classes cut, enrollment cut back. It’s absurd because when they cut enrollment they are also cutting revenue.

By: tegrat

tegrat — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:20:36 +0000

We could also reform the way we finance our healthcare. Senate Bill 810 proposes a financing system which, when last analyzed by the Lewin Group, would save the state $10 billion a year and provide every resident with guaranteed comprehensive, and affordable quality healthcare. The anitquated way in which we finance healthcare is yet another sacred cow that needs to be aggressively reformed.

By: patwater

patwater — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:11:20 +0000

I always that if you thought about this a bit more than the “corporations should pay their fair share” level that you’d come to the opposite conclusion. In the long run, corporations demand for property is extremely elastic. So raising their property taxes encourage business to locate elsewhere and will have a large deadweight loss. That’s just basic economic theory. Individual’s demand for housing is much less elastic. Thus, raising taxes on them won’t have the same negative economic effects. People simply want to live in California, despite our dysfunction–just witness the insane property values that we had a could of years ago. In addition, it would have the added benefit of deincentivizing sprawl by making home ownership more expensive–generally considered to be an environmental good.

So if anything, I think we should be raising property taxes on homeowners and not corporations. Though I have a feeling this won’t be as popular.