Texas tax cuts

If taxes have to drop, I'd prefer sales tax to property. While both theoretically affect everyone, sales tax would see a direct impact in people's pockets. Homeowners would benefit from the property tax, but renters probably wouldn't see most of it - owners would likely just pocket the extra profit.

 

Half and half

 

There's also a serious push by a couple of powerful republicans from San Antone and San Angelo to give the Parks Dept more/most/all of the sales tax surcharge revenue from outdoor/sporting goods that they enacted solely for that purpose back in '07. Since then, only 41% of it has actually gone to TPWD, and not surprisingly the Dept is woefully underfunded and there's a huge backlog of maintenance projects.

The state lands are the only place a huge percentage of Texans can realistically go to get outdoors and fish and hike and hunt and paddle and camp and whatnot.

 

I agree. Texas is in no position to be giving out tax cuts at this point. All state departments are woefully underfunded at this point. 20 years of budget cuts and freezes eventually start to have big impacts and we're seeing it now.

One of the first things I noticed when I visited my parents a few months ago is how awful the roads are now. And that makes sense considering the Texas DoT is operating on a multi million dollar budget shortfall. The same goes for several other departments in Texas.

You can't just freeze spending in a state that has some of the fastest population growth in the US. Yet Texas legislators are content with starving critical agencies of funding while handing out tax cuts that frankly would have a relatively marginal impact.

Oh and the biggest problem isn't the actual tax cut. It's the fact that the Texas Senate rewrote the rules on the spending cap. Until now, tax cuts have always counted as spending for the purposes of managing the spending cap. This makes sense. You have a choice with existing funding. You can use it to fund governemnt programs or give it back to taxpayers in the form of a tax cut. But ultimately the effect is the same. The money is spent in some fashion and counts against the state's total spending cap.

Well Dan Patrick and company rewrote the rules in his tax plan to exempt property taxes as spending. This allows him to create the illusion that we are cutting property taxes while maintaining existing spending. That's a freaking lie. If you cut taxes, you are in effect spending money. But this stupid accounting trick will allow the supposed "fiscally responsible" Republican supermajority to claim that they cut taxes and held the line on spending.

I miss Texas dearly but I'm happy to live in a state that is governed far more effectively than Texas's.

BTW if you are going to implement a tax cut, how about a renter's credit? In Minnesota, renters who have an income under $58000 are entitled to a tax refund (it scales with your income so the lower your income, the larger the potential refund) The intention is to offset the fact that renters dont benefit from property tax fluctuations or cuts. When property taxes took a dive in 2009, renters were still paying the same rent and when the government passed a property tax cut, renters saw nothing as well. I think this would be a nice targeted cut that would really help the folks who need it the most.

 

My favorite activity is always the what not.

 

I get that leftists think all income belongs to the state first and they decide how much people get back. But most people don't think that way. They see a tax cut as taking less, not spending more.

A tax cut is a reduction in revenue, not an increase in outlays.

 

Both tax cuts, please. We are overtaxed as it is. Spur consumer spending and business spending.

Also use productivity and efficiency improvements to increase the ability to fund things.

 

Legalizing mar1juana would generate a lot of cash... Plus citizens wouldn't have to spend tax dollars to prevent it from being in the state when it's already here.

 

If you have to choose then sales tax. I agree that mar1juana legalization would also increase revenue, decrease spending, and spur investment.

 

Cutting the sales tax would benefit more people.

 

Agree with the idea that tax cuts are dumb. If the state were flush in money, I'd get it. But as was previously stated, multiple agencies are broke. Tax cuts purely for political capital is a dumb idea.

 

how bout we keep it as is and spend $4.9 bil on infrastructure projects?

 

agencies dont exist for their own sake

 

My pappy taught me infrastructure projects is for commies and the poor. Tax cuts make me go YEEEE HAWWWWWW I don't even know the details and I don't care. No amount of information will ever change my opinion. If you say tax cuts aren't Jesus then you equal lib-pig commie half-black Hussein Obamarama!

 

One has nothing to do with the other. Tax cuts do not positively impact economic growth in any meaningful way.

How exactly do you propose to increase productivity and efficiency while cutting taxes at the same time.

 

The sad part is that 4.9 billion is peanuts in Texas. The state needs a lot more than that in order to make up for decades of cuts. The DoT alone is short 5 billion dollars and that's just to maintain existing levels of road congestion. That also doesn't even account for the fact that the state has other problems like ageing water infrastructure, decaying power plants and utilities, rising health care expenditures (thanks for rejecting the medicaid expansion), and a school system that has been perpetually underfunded since the early 80s. (also the state's school funding formula was ruled unconstitutional so there's that issue as well)

Not to mention revenues from oil extraction taxes are collapsing due to low oil prices and slowing production and the state has a comptroller's office that has no clue how to actually project revenues and spending (so good luck figuring out the actual state of Texas's finances)

When you spend 20 years convincing Texans that government is worthless, you eventually end up with a government that is in fact worthless.

 

With all due respect, is it possible for you to make a post down here that doesn't come across as a comment from Rush Limbaugh on a bad day?

 

He treats the D&D like an open mic night in preparation for the main show: the Houston Chronicle comments section.