Wrongo ** Dogface**, for us it is common courtesy not to insult our good friends over in Mississippi. It is common *sense * not to make fast judgements until you know what you are talking about.
Apparently you weren’t raised in Alabama were you?
Bosda - I never put words in your mouth. Neither should you read more into my words. Yes, I took your slightly off topic remarks to indicate your position on the tax proposal. Whatever you were hinting, I fail to see what how what you have written has addressed the topic of debate. I freely admit that some of my rants were off topic.
So to make my position clear:
The initial post indicates that the issue up for vote is on income tax reform alone. It is not. The “no” vote is not necessarily a vote against a fair tax schedule, but could be considered a veto on the bundle of proposals.
Should Governor Riley buck his own political brethren? I think he’ll be a one-term governor.
Will he successfully court African-American voters? Some. But a good portion felt the veto against the bill to restore voting rights was a slap in the face and therefore distrust the governor.
Has Riley opened a can of worms? No. It will be for the most part business as usual. I expect the legislature will pass an increase in the sales tax and sin taxes; people will moan about how unfair it is to the poor (with which I agree); and the state will cut some services and employees.
Right. A good source of the distributional aspects of the state and local taxes in all 50 states is this publication from Citizens for Tax Justice. Here are some facts about Alabama:
(1) The lowest quintile pays 10.6% of their income in state and local taxes. Of this, 7.3% is from sales and excise taxes, 1.4% from property taxes and 1.9% from income taxes.
(2) The top 1% pay 3.8% of their income in state and local taxes. The distribution here is 1.1% from sales and excise taxes, 0.9% from property taxes, 2.9% from income tax, and -1.1% due to the federal deduction offset that John Mace mentioned above. Note that these 10.6% for the lowest quintile and 3.8% for the top 1% are, within a few tenths of a percent, the figures cited in that editorial that Reeder linked to.
(3) Alabama’s tax code is the 10th most regressive one according to the CTJ’s ranking system. Particularly regressive aspects are the virtually flat-rate income tax, the fact that the income tax is not indexed for inflation, the fact that sales tax is charged on groceries, and that there is an income tax deduction for federal taxes paid.
(4) The Alabama tax structure has gotten more regressive in recent years. Since 1989, the change in taxes as shares of income went up by 1% for the bottom quintile while droppoing by 0.2% for the top 1%. Apparently, this is primarily due to the lack of indexation of the income tax to inflation.
Yup, nobody but nobody in Bamalama ever insults Mississippi.
:rolleyes:
Little sensitive there, captain?
I lived in RI for awhile and while there are many things screwed up about that state, they had the best state income tax (other than no tax) I’ve ever encountered. You simply paid a certain percentage of your Federal Income tax (I think it was ~25%). The form was postage card sized and took about 5 minutes to fill out. You didn’t have to worry about whether something was deductible on the Fed form and not on the State from, or vice versa. I’m sure it also minimized the state’s administrative costs as well.
The idea of taxing groceries is just beyond my comprehension. I realize that it can be difficult to determine what exactly is and what is not groceries, but take a stab at it and run with it. Just don’t tax rice, potatoes, hamburger meat, etc, for crying out loud.
Thanks!
As for RI, CTJ lists the fact that the RI state income tax is based on the progressive federal income tax as the most progressive feature of its tax system. (The least progressive feature is its high sales tax.)
andros:
“Yup, nobody but nobody in Bamalama ever insults Mississippi.”
“Little sensitive there, captain?”
That’s silly. andros, a good general statement carries the tenor of the predominant traits of a people. Of course some low life Bamalamaians feel superior to the Mississippians, in fact some transplanted yankees feel superior to Mississippians all the time.
Hell, Alabamaians have put so much money into the slot machines of the casinos of Mississippi that Mississippi no longer ranks at the bottom of the national public school test scores but have moved upwards six notches towards the top.
Ain’t that love.
Oh, I’ve had it! I was hoping I wouldn’t have to hang out Alabama’s dirty linen in public for all to see, but you all won’t stop harping so here are the facts about Bob and his Tax Plan…
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Alabama is not broke. Off-shore oil money in the billions is in a trust fund where our politicians can’t reach it. They are mad. Good idea huh?
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Bob Riley has said that Alabama is 680 million short of meeting the state budget. Bob didn’t mention that the feds have made available 185 million for this purpose. The last four years have seen an absurd increase in the cost of doing state buisness through salary raises and the addition of more state employees.
If we cut them back we save 86 million. Bob Riley claims that by cutting the liberal use of state vehicles he will have saved the people of Alabama 250 million by the end of this year.
If you do the math you can see that Alabama would then only be in debt -> 159 million. an amount that we could probably borrow from Mississippi.
** But when cornered, Governor Bob will tell us that the largest tax increase in Alabama’s history (1.2 billion dolars. Eight time the next biggest.) is not about the budget. His tax increase is about “improving education”.
>__/////>>>>> HA!<<<<<\\_**<
- (The trouble with education in Alabama in a minute…)*
_ _ _ The Trouble with Education in Alabama_ _ _
…is educators. They have a union. The high paid lobbyist for the union is Paul Hubbard. He is known as the most powerful man in Montgomery. Petty legislators quake in their boots at his passing. Teachers bow down and twitter respectively when he approaches. It’s best that they do, collective health insurance is only available through the teachers union.
State Superintendent of Education Ed Richardson is the dog that Paul Hubbard wags. And this coming year they are poised to wag away 160 million dollars in federal educational improvement funds because they refuse to allow compentency tests for teachers. Alabama doesn’t dismiss tenured teachers for incompentency.
Neither can state legislators be dismissed for incompentency. They can hardly be dismissed for outright thievery. Ours, you see, is a system that is easily manuplated by the slick.
Into this climate comes Bob Riley, once probably a good man to whom greed, ambition and power saw fit to corrupt. Bob thinks that bags full of money from life blood sucking taxes will make our children bright and shiny and new like the capital dome and he will bask in the reflection. He is wrong.
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Attendence this year dropped again in Alabama. The ratio of student to “paid personnel” dropped again this year. Forty years ago it was amost forty students to one “paid employee” . Today it is about fourteen to one and test scores have dropped accordingly . Strangely, the highest average scores ever registered in Alabama were over forty years ago.
Maybe it’s something in the water. -
Local school systems that have funded their schools locally without the money passing through Montgomery have just last week discovered that they will lose money under the proposed Riley tax increase. The Mountain Brook system and the Vestavia school system in Jefferson County, both ranking among the top 10 presentile of test scores in the nation, were a bit disapointed to learn Bob Riley’s complicated tax scheme would leave their systems a couple of million short of last years state bucks.
Governor Bob said (paraphrased) " it was just an oversight , trust me, it will be amended". -
Four years ago the City of Birmingham paid the administrators of the Birmingham school system more than the city of New York paid theirs. I bet they still do.
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Four years ago the City of Birmingham ignored a stipulation in a will that bequeathed a large plot of land to the city and built a 50 million dollar high school on the land. The stipulation required that the land be used only as a park. The city of Birmingham didn’t contest the restriction they simply ignored it and today there stands a two year old 50 million dollar school building that is falling apart. Fall classes have been delayed until the school can be made safe. And so on.
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The largest part of the tax dollars that are raised by Bob’s ambitious plan is to be directed to a special fund. Not earmarked but a discretionary fund. Bob said that the reason is is to keep the money out of the happy hands of the legislature and the bureaucratic educators. “Trust me.” he might have said.
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I don’t know about other states but in 1990 Alabama amended it’s Constitution to permit people so inclined to donate money to an “Education Fund”. It is , I think, Amendment 512. And so far idonations have totalled one hundred and seventy eight dollars and fifty eight cents, and, I’m told, twenty dollars of that is missing.
( I grow unhappy relating this. Goodnight.)
No wait! Let’s leave on a pleasant note…Chief Justice Roy Moore is the higest paid State Supreme Court Judge in the nation - $200,000 per annum plus.
Good…now I feel better.