Ken Simpler: Advocate for the 1%, Taxing Everyone Else.
Celia Cohen fellates Ken Simpler and supply side economics once more in reporting on the Revenue Commission’s findings:
They also found, as Markell had, retirees are getting a sweet deal through an assortment of tax breaks that ought to be revisited. They concluded it was fine for the state to rely on personal income taxes and corporate franchise taxes and fees as the mainstays of its revenue, although the personal income taxes could stand to have itemized deductions eliminated and the top marginal rate lowered.
What they decided the state could use, though, was another steady revenue source. They identified a property tax as the best candidate, especially because Delaware has one of the lowest property tax burdens in the country. Nobody should get too excited yet about this idea, one way or the other. Here is where it pays to remember Markell’s remark about the difference between the math and the politics. Other suggestions: Eliminate the estate tax. Shave the corporate income tax but nudge up the gross receipts tax. Recalibrate the realty transfer tax.
There was one last conclusion to be drawn. People ought to pay attention to that Ken Simpler guy. He appears to be the driving force behind a lot of the analysis.
No shit. Eliminating the Estate Tax, cutting the corporate income tax rate, eliminating itemized deductions (like your mortgage deduction) and lowering the top marginal rate (which is already at 6.6% starting at the $60,000 net injcome)??? All horrible conservative ideas that are giveaways to the wealthy and that will further deprive this state of revenue, all the while raising taxes on everyone else.
Ken Simpler should be ashamed of himself. And Celia has no shame.
That’s pretty atrocious. Tried and failed. And tried yet again, and failed yet again. But Simpler must be thinking, “If it worked for Jack…?”
Did you catch the last line of Celia’s post — the Chip Flowers strikethrough?
Her story had absolutely nothing to do with him.
She’s having a harder time letting go of Chip than Chip did in letting go of the trappings of the office.
Back to the point of the article: considering that the state has a shortage of reliable sources of long-term revenue and that this was a “revenue commission,” how come it seems that most of the ideas from this commission would either reduce revenues or maintain current levels? Not exactly what they were supposed to do.
Maybe we should rename our state Delkansas?
Repeat after me conservatives: The Laffer Curve is False. Revenues have only increased over the last 25 years when Democrats raised taxes. When Republicans cut taxes, revenues plummeted.
Pay attention to this, middle class Delawareans. Eliminating your deductions will raise your taxes. It will raise your tax burden more than any gas tax ever will. And I can’t get an answer yet on what this scheme might do for reciprocity — those of us who do not work in Delaware get a reduction in taxes equal to the amount to paid to the state you work in. If reciprocity goes away, they’ve have a pretty major exodus of middle class folks from this state. A bigger and more real exodus than the one threatened by these nameless wealthy people who will leave if their taxes go up.
I will personally leave this site if they take away a single itemized tax deduction.
The smarter thing to focus on is property reassessments and let the taxes rise there. They’ve been static (except for school taxes) forever and need a boost. And it won’t make much difference to the current real estate market anyway.
Delaware State News did a good job of reporting on this:
I don’t usually do this, out of deference to a former colleague, but some of Celia’s bullshit needs calling out:
“The politicians here know if they tried to put in a sales tax, they would be dumped out of office the way the tea taxed in colonial times was dumped into the harbor.”
Bullshit. They’ve never tried, so how do they “know” that? It’s just more of the bullshit conventional wisdom that passes for thought for Celia.
“Nor did anyone want to jeopardize the state’s standing as a corporate capital, not with business taxes and fees financing roughly a third of the state budget. Like the Golden Goose, the famous financial fowl, this is the Bountiful Blue Hen, and it had better not be killed.”
Meaningless gibberish. The fee for Fortune 500 corporations is currently a bit more than $200,000 a year, about the price of one senior executive. Granted, the stealing of “unclaimed property” is being curtailed, but that wasn’t a fair way of producing revenue in the first place.
What Celia Cohen knows about policy would fit on a postage stamp. She’s the local version of Politico.
Repealing the estate tax is a kitchen–table issue chez Charlie Copeland.
“nudge up the gross receipts tax” of all the stupid bullshit in the “Simpler Plan” – this rises to the top.
To make it seem like tax increases are not off the table, he suggests “nudging” up taxes on small Delaware based businesses that do most of their business in Delaware in order to export that tax money as subsidies to large businesses that do billions of dollars worth of business outside of Delaware.
Nobody has mentioned the benefit to the rest of us if the rich people leave for Florida. I know this was intended as a warning, but I’m perfectly willing to lose $4 million if it means getting rid of the stingy rich fucks who won’t pay it.
Legitimate question: How much does Ken Simpler stand to inherit?
Stop giving money away to Corporations like Bloom Energy, with NO ROI!!!
• Born and raised in Rehoboth Beach, the son of Ken and Karen Simpler. While growing up, Ken’s family operated the Avenue Restaurant, a popular Rehoboth eatery.
@anonymous: Way to miss the point. We expect nothing less from conservatives.
@Jason: I knew that much. I don’t know if that equates to any substantial amount of money he might inherit.
Cassandra —
Another point on repeal of itemized deductions … will make it harder when doing your state tax returns. No more simply copying a few numbers and attaching your 1040 Schedule A. Another set of calculations.
More work for the accountants. Should legislation ever be introduced, call it the CPA Income Enhancement Act.
They had enough dough to send him to St Andrews and Princeton. I’ll bet with land in the family we are talking a pretty serious chunk of inheritable change.
Interestingly, there is very little about him online. He has a tiny digital footprint for a politician.
The average citizen is finally feeling like there may be some kind of decent future ahead after years of no wage growth, unemployment and underemployment, so the government immediately wants to put the jack boot to their heads to push them back down the ladder while simultaneously creating new $93,000 positions for their cronies paid for by the same middle-class they’re trying to exterminate.
Fuckers.
That pretty much covers it.
I can’t get my head around why they would consider the gross receipts tax increase. They all cry for jobs and then screw the actual companies who do 80% plus of work and hiring within the damn state. There are republican small business owners too.
The committee list shows how Brian Townsend needs support, directly and not just through this blog. Quinn Johnson is a de facto Republican. Glenn Kenton is a roaring Laffer disciple [and Simpler is Kenton’s disciple]. The UD reps are sound, Josh Martin is a fair man and the administration folks are decent souls, but the loudest voices on this panel are those of the du Pont Administration in exile.
The gross receipts tax increase makes sense. It’s paid by business owners, whose businesses pay no income tax.
A sales tax, though, is hugely regressive. As would be a repeal of the estate tax.
The committee is wrong about the estate tax spurring people to move. But there is a tax that has prompted thousands to move — only they have moved in, not out: Our low rates of property taxation.
It’s no secret that many thousands of retirees (not all of them 65 or older) have fled NY, Pa. and NJ because our property taxes are a fraction of what they are in northeastern states, which fund education largely through local property taxes. Once they turn 65 and have been here three years, they get even lower property taxes.
We already fund the vo-tech districts through property taxes that don’t require referendum to increase — and those schools spend roughly 50% more per student than do traditional schools. We could enact a similar tax statewide to fund education statewide.
More than any of the taxes discussed, property tax is a tax on wealth — on the property (granted, only real property) a person owns, rather than on wages. Do you think it’s an accident that Delaware, home to generations of people living off their ancestors’ largesse, has high taxes on wages but low ones on property?
As for the notion that people would reject such a tax, surely it wouldn’t escape notice that the rich would pay more than the middle class. Any time a higher tax on the wealthy (who have seen their taxes roughly halved since 1980) is proposed, we hear the usually whining about “soaking” the rich — but polls show that such a course is widely popular. So on what basis would it be a political liability?
Agreed on all counts.
The real estate tax is absurdly low by any reasonable standard. And the claim that the modest estate tax would spur out-migration begs vainly for evidence.
Sales tax and gross receipts tax are two sides of the same coin.
If there are “business owners whose businesses pay no income tax” its because their businesses aren’t making money. Unless they are a utility of course.
In my experience, people with school-age children often move to PA and pay the higher tax to get a decent public school system, then they move back to DE once their kids are out of school. Their reasoning is that the higher PA property tax is cheaper than a private school.
Minnesota raised taxes on its high earners and they didn’t go anywhere. Plus Minnesota’s economy is doing pretty well.
“In my imaginatiom
experience, people with school-age children often move to PA and pay the higher tax to get a decent public school system, then they move back to DE once their kids are out of school.”Fixed.
Moving to Pa. is the smart play if you have three or more kids. But Pa. property taxes in Chadds Ford are about $10,000 a year higher than Delaware’s in NCCo. So that’s $130,000 more you’re paying for the 13 years in public school. For a single kid, you might as well pay the private-school tuition. With two kids it’s a toss-up — do the savings mitigate the hassle of moving? With three it’s a no-brainer.
Rufus: Except for publicly-traded corporations like Gore, DuPont, Chemours and chain stores, businesses don’t pay income tax because they’re all pass-throughs. A gross receipts tax is a clean, easily-administered [“a tax you can compute on a postcard”] tax that is directly tied to the volume of the business, and the benefits the business derives from being in Delaware.
Gore is a private company.
John Manifold – I don’t know if you really don’t know, or are trying to be cute. A gross receipts tax is paid when you engage in business in the State of Delaware. This tax is paid by the seller of goods or the provider of services on transactions within in the state.
So you are taxing Delawareans and leaving the large multinationals that derive benefits from being domiciled in Delaware off the hook.
Jason: Clearly, a bump to the franchise tax maximum is warranted. To whatever level the market will bear.
TB: Thanks for the correction on Gore.
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/firststatepolitics/2015/05/27/tax-wealthy-brackets/28010267/
This. Because we should.
Thanks for the link. Sadly, Markell still clinging to failed trickle-down economics, has become a pitiful joke.
@ Geezer how is that missing the point! Lack of capital, stifles business growth.
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/money/business/2015/05/26/lack-capital-stifles-delawares-business-growth/27973275/
I’d rather see money going to a small business, than Bloom which has investors out the wa-zoo.
When is Bloom going to put back into the Delaware economy??
Take from the people, who are working sometimes 15 hours a day, to keep a small business going. Delaware needs to stop spending money it doesn’t have. Cut & gut the DOE, bring it back to the classroom!
The DOE invested in Bloom? That’s news to me. Or are you getting your conspiracy theories mixed up?
@Jason330 sorry.
But you gotta love this!
http://www.youngcons.com/actor-james-woods-tweets-out-picture-of-obama-flag-and-its-hilarious/
The lack of capital available for Delaware businesses is a local bank problem, not a local government problem. Unless you are thinking that Delawareans should be in the business of handing out business loans. She did say that Delaware doesn’t do enough to help people understand how to apply for grants, but there isn’t enough money in that pool to provide a serious line of business financing to anyone. It is pretty remarkable to me that all of the banks here who get such a great deal from taxpayers just to be in this state aren’t doing more to help support small businesses here.
@Cassandra We are in the business of handing out business “Loans”. What about the money going to Bloom Energy? I’m sorry, that is part of our “green energy initiative” ha-ha!
The money that went to Fisker. What was that? Why was there no safety net or an incentive plan attached to that money? You’ll say there is an incentive for Bloom, then why have they not met their goals & why is it so secretive that what we pay each month is not shown on our bills?
I know it’s to promote jobs, right.
If you worked in a company & did this w/o a ROI, YOU WOULD BE FIRED!
Who came up with this idea that the activities that are desirable and profitable for private business are also correct and necessary for government at any level? You make an all-caps statement that makes no sense. The role of a corporation, say, and the role of government are starkly different. Unless you come to terms with that you’ll probably continue to write things that make you look like a fucking imbecile.
We are in the business of handing out business “Loans”. What about the money going to Bloom Energy? I’m sorry, that is part of our “green energy initiative” ha-ha!
We are not in the business of handing out loans at the scale that banks are. Run off and check DEDOs budget for this kind of support and then get back to me. The money for Bloom comes directly from you via your Delmarva bill to be transferred to Bloom. Not a loan and it doesn’t come from your taxes.
But why would you know that? Somehow you think that the government is a private business. If you can’t hold up your end here at the grownup table, you need to be gone. Seriously.
Here is my point.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/03/12/delaware-corporate-incentives/70142512/
“And Delaware does not require regular, independent evaluations of economic development programs to determine the state’s return on investment.”
Why do they get a pass? Should the State have carte blanche with our money & not be held responsible?
Bloom has benchmarks, that have not been met. So why are they not held accountable. That is all I’m saying.
“Not a loan and it doesn’t come from your taxes.” That I know, it’s coming from my pocket.
And you are still an idiot. Delaware Politics dot com is where you want to be, it seems.
@anonymous: It misses the point because we’re talking about revenue coming in, not expenses going out. Every administration, Democratic and Republican alike, gives money to corporations to create jobs or keep them here. It’s gone on for decades.
Give it a motherfucking rest.