Taxation

Wichita turns taxation over to private interests

by Bob Weeks on December 4, 2011

In a free society with a limited government, taxation should be restricted to being a way for government to raise funds to pay for services that all people benefit from. But in the city of Wichita, taxation for private gain is overtaking our city.

The Ambassador Hotel, part of a project known as Douglas Place, makes use of several of these private tax policy strategies. By private tax policy, I mean that the proceeds of a tax are used for the exclusive benefit of one person (or business firm), instead of used for the benefit of all. In one example related to this hotel, the Wichita City Council is allowing private parties to determine the city’s tax policy at their discretion, not the city’s.

The tax in question is Wichita’s hotel guest tax. According to a description of the Tourism and Convention Fund in the city’s budget document, the goal of the guest tax is to “support tourism and convention, infrastructure, and promotion of the City.” Its priorities are to be “Fund priorities are: 1) debt service for tourism and convention facilities, 2) operational deficit subsidies and 3) care and maintenance of Century II.”

But in the case of the Ambassador Hotel project, the city passed a charter ordinance that would route 75 percent of this tax directly back to the hotel owners for their own use. That’s not the proclaimed purpose of the guest tax.

Instead, this is public taxation for private enrichment.

Those who benefit from things like this and tax increment financing (TIF) districts say they aren’t really benefiting, as they are, in fact, paying taxes.

But when taxes you must pay are routed back to you for your own exclusive use, what else can you call it except capture of a public function for your own personal use?

Failure of Wichita city leadership

If you need further evidence that Wichita is turning over taxation to private hands, consider this: The charter ordinance is subject to a protest petition. In the normal case, if sufficient signatures are gathered, the city council would have to either a) overturn the ordinance, or b) hold an election to let voters decide whether the ordinance takes effect. An effort that I have been involved with expects to turn in enough signatures this week to force this decision.

Now, if this tax policy regarding the Ambassador Hotel is truly in the public interest, we would expect that the city council would decide whether to hold such an election and bear its costs itself. But that’s not the case. In the agreement between the city and the Douglas Place developers, we see this: “If Developer requests a special election solely for the purpose of passing the charter ordinance in the event a sufficient protest petition is submitted, Developer shall reimburse the City for the actual out of pocket costs and expenses of conducting such election.”

In other words, the city is turning over to private interests the decision as to whether to have such an election, and also the responsibility for paying for it. This is a failure of Wichita city leadership to do the things that government, not private interests, should do.

Private taxation funds political entrepreneurship

In Wichita, especially in downtown, we see the rise of private tax policy, that is, the taxing power of government being used for private purposes. The above example is just one example. This private tax policy is pushed by Wichita’s political entrepreneurs. These are the people who would rather compete in the realm of politics rather than in the market.

Examples of Wichita’s political entrepreneurs include the developers the Ambassador Hotel: David Burk of Marketplace Properties, and the principals of Key Construction.

Competing in the political arena is easier than competing in the market. To win in the political arena, you only have to convince a majority of the legislative body that controls your situation. Once you’ve convinced them the power of government takes over, and the people at large are forced to transfer money to the political entrepreneurs. In other words, they must engage in transactions they would not elect to perform, if left to their own free will.

In the free marketplace, however, entrepreneurs have to compete by offering products or services that people are willing to buy, free of coercion. That’s hard to do. But it’s the only way to gauge whether people really want what the entrepreneurs are selling. It’s also the way that wealth and prosperity are created. Government spending on business does not have this effect.

One of the ways that political entrepreneurs compete is by making campaign contributions, and the developers of Douglas Place have mastered this technique. Key Construction principles contributed $13,500 to Mayor Carl Brewer and four city council members during their most recent campaigns. Council Member Jeff Longwell alone received $4,000 of that sum, and he also accepted another $2,000 from managing member David Burk and his wife.

All told, Burk and his wife contributed at least $7,500 to city council candidates who will be voting whether to give Burk money. Burk and others routinely make the maximum contribution to all — or nearly all — candidates, even those with widely varying political stances. How can someone explain Burk’s (and his wife’s) contributions to liberals like Miller and Williams, and also to conservatives like Longwell, Meitzner, and former council member Sue Schlapp?

The answer is: Burk will be asking these people for money.

Wichitans need to rise against these political entrepreneurs and their usurpation of a public function — taxation — for their own benefit. The politicians and bureaucrats who enable this should realize they should be serving the public interest, not the narrow and private enrichment of the few at the cost of many.

Tagged as: Carl Brewer, Downtown Wichita revitalization, Government spending, Jeff Longwell, Tax increment financing, Taxation, Wichita city council, Wichita city government

{ 2 comments }

Pompeo to introduce ‘Energy Freedom and Economic Prosperity Act’

by Bob Weeks on November 1, 2011

This week U. S. Representative Mike Pompeo of Wichita plans to introduce the “Energy Freedom and Economic Prosperity Act,” a bill that would eliminate all tax credits related to energy.

Tax credits, sometimes called tax expenditures, are spending accomplished through the tax code rather than by legislative appropriations. Two prominent tax credits related to energy production are the tax credit for producing and blending ethanol with gasoline, and the production tax credit for wind and solar power production. These industries have claimed that the tax credits are necessary for these forms of energy to be economically viable.

Pompeo’s office estimates that the bill could save up to $90 billion in tax expenditures over the next ten years. The legislation proposes that these savings be used to reduce the corporate income tax rate.

The subsidies that would be repealed include, according to Pompeo’s office: Plug-In electric and fuel cell vehicles, Alternative fuel and alternative fuel mixtures, Cellulosic Biofuel Producer Credit, Alternative fuel infrastructure, Production Tax Credit for electricity produced from renewable sources, including wind, biomass, and hydropower, Investment Tax Credit for equipment powered by solar, fuel cells, geothermal or other specified renewable sources, Enhanced oil recovery credit, and credit for producing oil and gas from marginal wells, Advanced Nuclear Power Generation Credit, and Clean coal investment credits.

This bill targets tax credits only. Loans and loan guarantees are not a subject. This bill would not affect the programs that funded Solyndra, a high-profile example of failure. This bill would not affect the $132.4 million loan guarantee recently given to a cellulosic ethanol plant in southwest Kansas, either.

Pompeo’s office stresses that this is not a bill targeted at renewable forms of energy like ethanol and wind. It affects all tax credits, including those that are directed at the nuclear, coal, and oil and gas. The goal is to get government out of the energy sector and let markets direct energy investment.

This bill represents a continued effort by Pompeo to reduce government intervention and to give more freedom to markets. Politically, it puts him at odds with many in this state who favor expansion of wind energy in Kansas. In particular, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback is a proponent of wind power and ethanol. Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer is also promoting Wichita as a place for wind power companies to locate.

Tagged as: Carl Brewer, Kansas fourth district, Mike Pompeo, Sam Brownback, Subsidy, Taxation, Wind power

{ 3 comments }

Warren Buffet’s secretary: marginal vs. average, Hauser’s Law

by Bob Weeks on September 27, 2011

Some of the confusion surrounding Warren Buffet’s secretary and her taxes comes from the failure to distinguish between average and marginal tax rates. There’s also the fact that Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes are paid on only the first $106,800 of income.

But considering income taxes alone and not payroll taxes, there’s often confusion between average tax rates (the total amount of tax paid divided by the amount earned) and marginal tax rates (the amount of tax paid on the next dollar earned).

As an illustration, consider a single person earning $60,000. Plugging the numbers into the tax calculator at efile.com, and not taking any deductions other than standard and personal, produces a tax liability of $8,444. On income of $60,000, this is an average tax rate of 14.07 percent.

But consider if the person earns another $100. (The calculator doesn’t work with fractional dollars, so we’ll use $100 instead of $1.)

Now, the tax liability is $8,469. That’s an increase of $25 in taxes for an increase of $100 in income. In other words, this person is in the 25 percent tax bracket, meaning that each additional dollar earned results in an additional $0.25 in tax.

Not all earnings are taxed at this 25 percent rate. Some is taxed at a much lower rate, and some not at all. By the way, the average tax rate has now increased to 14.09 percent.

If the $60,000 wage earner is married with two children, the tax bill falls to $3,463, producing an average tax rate of 5.77 percent, and the marginal rate on the next dollar earned is 15 percent. This again assumes no deductions beyond the standard and personal.

So what tax rate does Warren Buffet’s secretary pay? There can be many answers.

One thing we can be certain of, however, is that wealthy people like Buffet have options in structuring their income that ordinary wage earners don’t. Buffet, for example, says he receives most of his income in the form of capital gains or dividends, which are taxed at 15 percent.

This is an illustration of Hauser’s Law at work. Try as we might, raising tax rates won’t generate higher revenues (as a percentage of gross domestic product), due to Hauser’s law. W. Kurt Hauser explains in The Wall Street Journal: “Even amoebas learn by trial and error, but some economists and politicians do not. The Obama administration’s budget projections claim that raising taxes on the top 2% of taxpayers, those individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning $250,000 or more, will increase revenues to the U.S. Treasury. The empirical evidence suggests otherwise. None of the personal income tax or capital gains tax increases enacted in the post-World War II period has raised the projected tax revenues. Over the past six decades, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have averaged just under 19% regardless of the top marginal personal income tax rate. The top marginal rate has been as high as 92% (1952-53) and as low as 28% (1988-90). This observation was first reported in an op-ed I wrote for this newspaper in March 1993. A wit later dubbed this ‘Hauser’s Law.’”

People react to changes in tax law. As tax rates rise, people seek to reduce their taxable income and make investments in unproductive tax shelters. There is less incentive to work and invest. These are some of the reasons why tax hikes usually don’t generate the promised revenue.

Any plan to generate substantially more revenue by raising tax rates will have to overcome this tax-avoiding behavior. Hauser’s law says this is not likely to happen.

Hauser’s Law illustrated. No matter what the top marginal tax rate, taxes collected remain an almost constant percentage of GDP.

Tagged as: Economics, Taxation

{ 0 comments }

Tax expenditures, or loopholes

by Bob Weeks on July 22, 2011

While most critics of government spending focus on entitlements, regular appropriations, and earmarks, there is a category of spending that not many have paid much attention. This spending is called “tax expenditures.” This year as part of the debate or controversy over raising the federal debt ceiling, attention is being paid to the cost of these tax expenditures, although the term commonly used is “loophole.”

It’s a big issue. As economist Martin Feldstein wrote in the Wall Street Journal, tax expenditures were thought to increase the federal budget deficit by $1 trillion in 2010.

We know where President Barack Obama stands. He is firm in wanting to increase tax revenue by eliminating tax expenditures. He focuses on those that apply to the rich, although there are plenty of tax expenditures that apply to the working poor and middle class, such as the earned income tax credit and child care credit.

To speak of these tax expenditures or loopholes having a “cost” makes sense only if you adopt a certain view of the world. It has to do with who owns what — you or government. George Reisman recently explained: “The underlying assumption of those who hold this view is that the government already owns the funds in question whether it has collected them in taxes or not. The government is the alleged owner of funds that belong to the taxpayer and which it abstains from taking. It allegedly spends these funds in allowing the taxpayers to keep them.”

Reisman further explained that eliminating tax expenditures is a tax increase, pure and simple, and must not be embraced: “The notion of tax expenditures provides the pretext for massive tax increases in the name of reducing government spending. This notion must be cast aside, so that the target of tax reform will be reductions in actual government spending, which then must be followed by reductions in taxes.”

Other economists agree. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, in his essay More Loophole Lobbyists, Please warns of the “oldest trick in the book,” which he says is “Give up your deductions, and we will reduce your income tax rate.”

I agree with their arguments. Increasing tax revenue to the state by eliminating tax expenditures is not a good thing. At the same time, the tax expenditures are a problem. Their very existence, and the continual effort to expand them or prevent their closing, is harmful to the economy, too. Spending through the tax system is a major way of implementing crony capitalism, that is, political entrepreneurship instead of market entrepreneurship, as explained by Charles G. Koch in The Wall Street Journal: “Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market. But it erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.”

Koch went on to explain that “Our elected officials would do well to remember that the most prosperous countries are those that allow consumers — not governments — to direct the use of resources. Allowing the government to pick winners and losers hurts almost everyone, especially our poorest citizens.”

I agree with that, too. This is why this is a difficult issue.

Tax expenditures are implemented through the tax system. It’s usually the income tax system, especially at the federal level, but also at the state level.

Some of the tax expenditures consist of deductions: The government deciding not to collect tax on income that is spent for a specific purpose. An example is the deduction for home mortgage interest. For 2010, this is estimated to “cost” the federal government $103.7 billion in taxes that it would otherwise collect, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

The tax expenditures that really “cost” the government — and by extension, other taxpayers that must pay unless spending is also reduced — are tax credits. These reduce the tax that must be paid dollar for dollar. An example is the “credit for alcohol fuels,” which is to say ethanol. The cost of this tax credit program for 2010 is given as $10.1 billion. Many credits are refundable, meaning that if the taxpayer has no tax liability, the government will send the recipient a check.

Other examples of tax credits cited by Feldstein include “$500 million annual subsidy for the rehabilitation of historic structures and a $4 billion annual subsidy of employer-paid transportation benefits.”

While supporters of many of these programs portray them as not costing the government anything, Feldstein writes that they do: “These tax rules — because they result in the loss of revenue that would otherwise be collected by the government — are equivalent to direct government expenditures.”

I argued this in testimony I presented to a committee in the Kansas Legislature last year, when it was considering restoring and expanding the Kansas historic preservation tax credit program. I told committee members: “We must recognize that a tax credit is an appropriation of Kansans’ money made through the tax system. If the legislature is not comfortable with writing a real estate developer a check for over $1,000,000 — as in the case with one Wichita developer — it should not make a roundabout contribution through the tax system that has the same economic impact on the state’s finances.”

In that committee, not one member voted against this program, even though the committee has some members who consider themselves very fiscally conservative and hawks on spending.

In Wichita, the city council regularly steers spending to certain companies through the tax system by granting property tax exemptions and tax increment financing.

Feldstein describes problems with spending implemented through the tax system:

Politicians use tax expenditures to grow the welfare state. While proposing a freeze on discretionary spending, President Obama at the same time proposed an expansion of a tax credit program for child or elderly care.
Once enshrined in the tax law, these appropriations don’t have to be reauthorized each year. They’re on auto-pilot, so to speak.
Eliminating tax expenditures is looked on by Republicans as a tax increase, so they are reluctant to support their elimination. Felstein counters: “But eliminating tax expenditures does not increase marginal tax rates or reduce the reward for saving, investment or risk-taking.”
Tax expenditures distort the economy in harmful ways: “[Eliminating tax expenditures] would also increase overall economic efficiency by removing incentives that distort private spending decisions.”

Feldstein concludes: “Cutting tax expenditures is really the best way to reduce government spending. And to be politically acceptable, the cuts in tax expenditures must be widespread, requiring most taxpayers to give up something so that the fiscal deficits can decline.”

The ‘Tax Expenditure’ Solution for Our National Debt

The credits and subsidies that make the tax code so complicated cost big bucks. Reduce them by third and the debt will be 72% of GDP in 2020 instead of 90%.

By Martin Feldstein

When it comes to spending cuts, Congress is looking in the wrong place. Most federal nondefense spending, other than Social Security and Medicare, is now done through special tax rules rather than by direct cash outlays. The rules are used to subsidize a wide range of spending including education, child care, health insurance, and a myriad of other congressional favorites.

These tax rules — because they result in the loss of revenue that would otherwise be collected by the government — are equivalent to direct government expenditures. That’s why tax and budget experts refer to them as “tax expenditures.” This year tax expenditures will raise the federal deficit by about $1 trillion, according to estimates by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. If Congress is serious about cutting government spending, it has to go after many of them.

Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Capitalism, Economics, Free markets, Government spending, Taxation

{ 0 comments }

Obama’s tax hikes must be resisted

by Bob Weeks on July 12, 2011

As our nation’s leaders consider the possibility of raising income tax rates, we need to be aware of the negative impact of higher marginal tax rates on the economy and make sure we resist the lure of higher taxes. This is especially important even if the new higher tax rates are confined to to the rich.

The concept of marginal tax rates is important to understand, as it holds the key to understanding how we can drive economic growth, and how we can kill it, too. President Barack Obama believes he has already cut taxes in the name of economic growth. These tax “cuts” — I use quotes deliberately — are part of the stimulus bill passed in February 2009.

So what are the Obama tax cuts? There was one program that qualified — sort of — as a “cut,” and several tax credit programs. The largest item that benefited most people is the Making Work Pay Tax Credit, a two-year program that rebates $400 per year to individual taxpayers, or $800 per year for married couples.

It’s important to note that this is not a reduction in marginal tax rates, which is the tax rate that people pay on the next dollar they earn. That’s what people focus on. The program will, however, reduce the average tax rate that people pay.

This bears repeating: People can’t control the tax on income they’ve already earned. But they can decide whether to submit themselves to the marginal tax rate: The tax rate the government charges on the next dollar they may — or may not — earn.

So why isn’t Obama’s Making Work Pay Tax Credit a stimulus boon to the economy? It’s not associated with any positive effort or activity by the recipients other than doing what they already do. (This applies to the Bush tax rebate in 2008, too.)

For tax cuts to be productive in growing the economy, they have to be associated with something positive, namely with work, saving, or investment. What many people positively respond to is a reduction in marginal tax rates, that is, the tax that must be paid on the next dollar earned.

Programs that reduce the average tax rate like Obama’s Making Work Pay Tax Credit and the Bush tax rebates of 2008 aren’t effective because they don’t affect the marginal rate — the rate paid on the next dollar earned. This is not to say that I am not in favor of these programs. Anything that reduces the burden of taxes is welcome. But they are not the type of tax cuts that spur economic growth.

Why are low marginal tax rates important to economic growth? First, high marginal tax rates discourage people from producing. As people get to keep less and less of what they produce after they pay higher tax rates, many decide to produce less. Some stop producing anything.

Second, high marginal tax rates encourage people to invest in economically unproductive investments like tax shelters simply to avoid tax, without regard to the underlying wisdom of the investment. Or, people decide that since government takes so much of the money they earn, they might as well spend it on tax-deductible expenses that they might not buy otherwise. A company might hold an engineering conference at an expensive luxury resort instead of a modestly-priced facility — or instead of holding it electronically.

Who responds most positively to reductions in marginal tax rates? First, with about half of American households paying no federal income tax at all — although they do pay payroll taxes — the idea of marginal tax rates doesn’t apply to them. That leaves high-income workers, or as Jeffrey A. Miron explains, the most economically productive members of society that are positively affected by marginal income tax rates:

The Bush cuts provided lower taxes on ordinary income, especially for taxpayers at the high end of the income distribution. These are some of the most energetic and productive people in society; raising tax rates would discourage their effort and entrepreneurship. High-income taxpayers also have multiple ways of avoiding high tax rates, so any revenue gain from raising rates would be modest. The Bush cuts also lowered taxes on dividend and capital gains income; maintaining these lower rates is even more important for economic performance. Capital is mobile: when it is taxed heavily here, it flees somewhere else, meaning lower investment and employment in the United States. And because capital income taxes discourage investment or drive it overseas, they generate little if any tax revenue. (Jeffrey A. Miron, “Why the Bush Tax Cuts Worked”)

It is these “energetic and productive” people that are responsible for a great deal of economic activity and job creation. When these people take steps to avoid taxes it means less productive economic activity and more unproductive tax shelters.

In Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform, author Leslie Carbone explains the harm of high marginal taxes, especially progressive taxes, where rates become higher as more income is earned:

The discouragement of earning money by working, saving, or investing inherent in any income tax is exacerbated by progressivity. While any high tax rates are economically destructive, high marginal rates are even worse, because high marginal rates particularly discourage productivity and inhibit economic growth. … By lowering potential pay off, high investment taxes especially discourage risky investment. Discouragement of risky investment squelches technological advancement, because new technologies are the most risky. This means our progressive tax system actually reduces progress and inhibits improve quality of life.”

If the goal of the Obama Administration is to create private sector economic growth instead of growth in government, it needs to keep the Bush tax cuts in place and avoid increases in marginal tax rates for everyone, especially the most productive members of society. A better strategy would be to reduce these tax rates farther to create even more economic growth.

Tagged as: Barack Obama, Economics, Stimulus bill, Taxation

{ 0 comments }

Huffington Post says ‘tax it all.’ Seriously.

by Bob Weeks on April 20, 2011

Yesterday the Huffington Post’s Jeffrey Sachs criticized a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, claiming that the Journal “distorts the truth about taxes.”

In the Journal piece, the claim is made that even if we taxed all the income of the top one percent of taxpayers, that would not raise enough funds to close the deficit. Sachs takes issue with the numbers, he claiming that taxing “total income of the top 1% would close the budget deficit entirely.” He sees an error in the numbers the Journal uses, and I think he might be right. I can’t figure out the arithmetic the Journal uses.

But while Sachs takes great relish in showing — at least in his mind — that the Journal is wrong in its numbers, Sachs himself can’t be taken seriously. After all, he is proposing to tax 100 percent of the adjusted gross income income of the top one percent of earners.

While liberals might want to take all the income of our country’s high-earning people, this is a plan that can’t be taken seriously, especially by a purportedly serious person as Sachs. It could possibly work for one year — if you could pull off a surprise and make the 100 percent tax rate retroactive, after everyone has already earned the money for the taxable year. Any other plan will fail. That’s because we know that when marginal tax rates rise, people takes steps to have less income. Some decide to work and risk less, so they have less income. Others seek to shelter income from taxes, and since almost all such tax shelters are an economically unproductive use of funds, we are all poorer as a result. And some people lie and cheat in order to avoid taxes. But we can be sure that people will takes steps to have less taxable income as tax rates rise.

Try as we might, raising tax rates won’t generate higher revenues (as a percentage of gross domestic product), due to Hauser’s law. W. Kurt Hauser explains in The Wall Street Journal: “Even amoebas learn by trial and error, but some economists and politicians do not. The Obama administration’s budget projections claim that raising taxes on the top 2% of taxpayers, those individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning $250,000 or more, will increase revenues to the U.S. Treasury. The empirical evidence suggests otherwise. None of the personal income tax or capital gains tax increases enacted in the post-World War II period has raised the projected tax revenues. Over the past six decades, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have averaged just under 19% regardless of the top marginal personal income tax rate. The top marginal rate has been as high as 92% (1952-53) and as low as 28% (1988-90). This observation was first reported in an op-ed I wrote for this newspaper in March 1993. A wit later dubbed this ‘Hauser’s Law.’”

Any plan to reduce the deficit by raising tax rates will have to overcome this tax-avoiding behavior. Hauser’s law says this is not likely to happen.

The subtitle to Hauser’s article is “Tax revenues as a share of GDP have averaged just under 19%, whether tax rates are cut or raised. Better to cut rates and get 19% of a larger pie.”

Hauser’s Law illustrated. No matter what the top marginal tax rate, taxes collected remain an almost constant percentage of GDP.

Tagged as: Economics, Taxation

{ 3 comments }

Flentje: Align taxation with spending

by Bob Weeks on April 19, 2011

In a recent newspaper column and an appearance on the KAKE Television public affairs program This Week in Kansas, H. Edward Flentje of Wichita State University said that we should seek to align government spending with taxation.

Presently we have systems where one level of government — say the federal government — collects taxes, and then sends the money back to local governments. Often this is in the form of grants, which local governments must apply for. If successful, the local units must then spend the money in certain ways. Flentje says that this system of money government moving from one level of government to another is the root of “cynicism, distrust, and outright anger at government.”

Citing Alice Rivlin, Flentje listed a number of programs that the federal government should stop funding. Local government, instead, should take over these programs.

Flentze mentioned Sedgwick County Commissioner Richard Ranzau, who is not voting for federal grants, one of the ways in which tax money is sent from one level of government to another. Ranzau says he votes against these grants for several reasons. The money is borrowed, he says, and we shouldn’t pass on the cost of current government operations to future generations. Second, accepting grants makes us dependent on federal spending, which, since grants come with strings attached, gives the federal government more control over local governmental bodies. And third, Ranzau sees no constitutional basis or justification for many of these programs.

While taxing and spending locally is preferred to remote taxation and spending, I would add that many of the programs suggested to be left to local government, particularly education, economic development, and job training, are best left to non-governmental, that is, market solutions.

Align spending with taxing

By H. Edward Flentje, Professor at the Hugo Wall School of Urban and Public Affairs at Wichita State University

“Spending is more responsible when the government that spends is the government that must finance that spending.” As an advisor to the late Robert F. Bennett, during his term as Kansas governor, 1975-79, I heard those words spoken often by him.

At the time Governor Bennett was being besieged from two sides. On the one hand he faced a barrage from low-level federal bureaucrats dangling dollars with strings designed to tell him what state government should do and how to do it.

On the other hand, Kansas local officials were demanding that the governor and state lawmakers send a larger portion of state taxes to local coffers.

More recently, the political philosophy underlying Bennett’s words has led to the demise of much revenue sharing and hundreds of categorical grants across the country. Kansas lawmakers eliminated two sizeable revenue sharing programs aiding cities and counties in the aftermath of 9/11, as other states are doing in the current downturn.

Still, in the current year, roughly $1 trillion in taxpayer funds will move from one level of government to another, and often from a second to a third level of government, through countless state and national programs. Huge administrative structures and arcane formulas remain in place to carry out these transfers between governments. Most deficit spending and budget battles today at all levels of government are tied to these transfers.

This behemoth has become incomprehensible to the public breeding cynicism, distrust, and outright anger at government — national, state, and local government.

One of the clearest and most consistent voices on how to tame this beast is Alice Rivlin, founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, co-author of a recent bi-partisan deficit reduction plan, and long-time advisor to Democrats and Republicans, most recently Paul Ryan, who last week released House Republicans’ budget plan.

As lawmakers struggle with unsustainable finances, they would be wise to revisit Rivlin’s radical suggestions of nearly twenty years ago on dividing more clearly the jobs of national and state governments, in her words:

Devolution. The federal government should eliminate most of its programs in education, housing, highways, social services, economic development, and job training.

The productivity agenda. The states should take charge of the primary public investment needed to increase productivity and raise incomes, especially to improve education and skill training and modernize infrastructure.”

Rivlin’s proposed reordering of state and national spending is reminiscent of Bennett’s prescription that spending should be aligned with taxing. Her “productivity agenda” also parallels rhetorically at least Governor Brownback’s “growth agenda” for Kansas. To carry out her plan would call for state and local officials to address their broadened obligations and the revenue requirements associated with removal of federal funding in education, skill training, and infrastructure.

Public disenchantment is challenging as never before the century-long practice of taxing (or borrowing) at one level of government and sending those revenues for another level of government to spend. Aligning spending with taxing offers a guide as national, state, and local lawmakers work to place their respective jurisdictions on a sustainable financial course. This realignment will not happen overnight, but one can hope it will not take another century to complete.

Tagged as: Government spending, Taxation

{ 0 comments }

Cost of tax compliance is high

by Bob Weeks on April 18, 2011

Each year Americans spend enormous effort and cost on tax recordkeeping and compliance. A study by the Tax Foundation estimated the time and cost of complying with the federal tax laws, and found: “In 2005 individuals, businesses and nonprofits will spend an estimated 6 billion hours complying with the federal income tax code, with an estimated compliance cost of over $265.1 billion. This amounts to imposing a 22-cent tax compliance surcharge for every dollar the income tax system collects. Projections show that by 2015 the compliance cost will grow to $482.7 billion.”

In Kansas for 2005, compliance costs for the income tax were estimated at 27.1% of the tax collected. That’s almost $2.5 billion in total costs, or $877 per person. To place this number in context, Kansas spends about $2.9 billion on public schools each year.

Furthermore, the cost of complying with the federal tax code is highly regressive. Those earning less than $20,000 spent nearly 6 percent of their income on compliance. Those with incomes of over $200,000 spent just 0.45 percent of their income on compliance. Curiously, those earning less than $20,000 will generally pay no income tax, yet they still pay to comply. (Many of these low earners will qualify for various spending programs that are implemented through the income tax system.)

By simplifying our tax code, we could eliminate much of this cost, and return that effort to productive use. As Paul Jacob wrote in a commentary: “This complexity has costs. And not just to my sanity. A whole industry has risen to ease the burden of figuring out our taxes. One hates to begrudge anyone an honest living, but really, most of today’s tax accountants would better serve humanity in some other job.”

It is estimated that nearly half of all households will pay no federal income tax this year. Some will point out that all workers pay social security taxes, but as we’re told, that’s not really a tax, it’s the government saving for our future retirement. (Only the truly deluded believe this.)

For those who do pay taxes, they often aren’t aware, on a continual basis, of just how much tax they pay. That’s because for wage earners, federal and state taxes are conveniently withheld from their paychecks. Many people, I suspect, look at the bottom line — the amount they receive as a check or automatic bank deposit — and don’t really take notice of the taxes that were withheld. This makes paying taxes almost painless.

For property taxes, anyone who has a mortgage probably has these taxes incorporated into their monthly mortgage payment, so they’re not aware of the taxes on a monthly basis. Renters pay them as part of their rent. Everyone who trades with a business pays them, as taxes such as the sales tax are part of what people have to pay to buy something.

To increase tax awareness, we should eliminate the withholding of taxes from paychecks and from monthly mortgage payments. Instead, each month or year the various taxing governments should send a bill to each taxpayer, and they would pay it just like the rest of their periodic bills. In this way, we would all be acutely aware of just how much tax we pay.

Since tax withholding from paychecks and mortgage payments reduces our awareness of just how much tax we pay, it’s unlikely that governments will stop the withholding of taxes and submit a bill to taxpayers. Instead, it’s left to ourselves to remain aware of how much we are paying.

A curiosity of tax season is that many people are happy because they get a refund. And they’re delighted to get that refund, so much so that many will pay high interest rates on a refund anticipation loan just to get the money a little earlier. The irony is that by adjusting their withholding, they could take possession of much of that money during the year as they earn it.

Tagged as: Taxation

{ 1 comment }

The ‘tax expenditure’ solution for our national debt

by Bob Weeks on July 20, 2010

While most critics of government spending focus on entitlements, regular appropriations, and earmarks, there is a category of spending that not many pay much attention to. The spending is called “tax expenditures.”

It’s a big issue. As economist Martin Feldstein writes in the Wall Street Journal, tax expenditures will increase the federal budget deficit by $1 trillion this year.

Tax expenditures are implemented through the tax system. It’s usually the income tax system, especially at the federal level. Taxpayers may receive tax credits, which reduce the tax that must be paid dollar for dollar. Many credits are refundable, meaning that if the taxpayer has no tax liability, the government will send the recipient a check. Examples cited by Feldstein include “$500 million annual subsidy for the rehabilitation of historic structures and a $4 billion annual subsidy of employer-paid transportation benefits.”

I argued this in testimony I presented to a committee in the Kansas Legislature this year, when it was considering restoring and expanding the Kansas historic preservation tax credit program. I told committee members: “We must recognize that a tax credit is an appropriation of Kansans’ money made through the tax system. If the legislature is not comfortable with writing a developer a check for over $1,000,000 — as in the case with one Wichita developer — it should not make a roundabout contribution through the tax system that has the same economic impact on the state’s finances.”

In that committee, not one member voted against this program, even though the committee has some members who consider themselves very fiscally conservative and hawks on spending.

Here in Wichita, the city council regularly steers spending to certain companies through the tax system by granting property tax exemptions and tax increment financing.

Feldstein describes problems with spending implemented through the tax system:

Politicians use tax expenditures to grow the welfare state. While proposing a freeze on discretionary spending, President Obama at the same time proposed an expansion of a tax credit program for child or elderly care.
Once enshrined in the tax law, these appropriations don’t have to be reauthorized each year. They’re on auto-pilot, so to speak.
Eliminating tax expenditures is looked on by Republicans as a tax increase, so they are reluctant to support their elimination. Felstein counters: “But eliminating tax expenditures does not increase marginal tax rates or reduce the reward for saving, investment or risk-taking.”
Tax expenditures distort the economy in harmful ways: “[Eliminating tax expenditures] would also increase overall economic efficiency by removing incentives that distort private spending decisions.”

The ‘Tax Expenditure’ Solution for Our National Debt

The credits and subsidies that make the tax code so complicated cost big bucks. Reduce them by third and the debt will be 72% of GDP in 2020 instead of 90%.

By Martin Feldstein

Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

Tagged as: Economic development, Economics, Government spending, Kansas state government, Tax abatements, Tax increment financing, TIF districts, Wichita city government

{ 5 comments }

Topeka tax increment financing project struggles

April 15, 2010

In Topeka, a residential and retail project funded with $5 million of tax increment financing (TIF) is in trouble.

Taxation

Failure of Wichita city leadership

Private taxation funds political entrepreneurship

The ‘Tax Expenditure’ Solution for Our National Debt

Align spending with taxing

The ‘Tax Expenditure’ Solution for Our National Debt

Trending Topics

Recent Tweets

What to Read

Important liberty sites

Resources

Kansas blogs

Miscellaneous

Categories

Meta

Archives

Samsphere friends

Kansas sites

Most Recent Posts

Special sections

Recent comments

Featured thoughts