Another Southern state not named Georgia looks to ditch the income tax
Another day, another Republican governor making a bold proposal on an issue Georgia lawmakers have been wrestling with. From the Times-Picayune in New Orleans:
Gov. Bobby Jindal is proposing to eliminate Louisiana’s income and corporate taxes and pay for those cuts with increased sales taxes, the governor’s office confirmed Thursday. The governor’s office has not yet provided the details of the plan.
“The bottom line is that for too long, Louisiana’s workers and small businesses have suffered from having a state tax structure that is too complex and that holds back economic prosperity,” Jindal said in a statement released by his office. “It’s time to change that so people can keep more of their own money and foster an environment where businesses want to invest and create good-paying jobs.”
Jindal said the plan would be revenue-neutral and that the goal would be to keep sales taxes “as low and flat as possible.”
Another Louisiana newspaper, the Monroe News-Star, reports the state’s sales tax could rise as high as 7 percent from its current level of 4 percent. Louisiana has three income-tax brackets, with married couples paying 2 percent on income up to $25,000, 4 percent between $25,000 and $100,000, and 6 percent on income above that.
Georgia — where couples pay 6 percent on any income above just $10,000 — has taken tentative steps down this road before, although never to the point of eliminating the income tax completely. Former Speaker Glenn Richardson in 2007 proposed repealing all ad valorem taxes and broadening the sales tax to cover goods and services (the latter are not taxed today) at the 4 percent rate — his so-called GREAT Plan. But that only included lowering the top income-tax rate from 6 percent to 4 percent, not zero. More recently, a commission appointed in 2010 to study comprehensive tax reform came back with a plan to lower the income-tax rate to no higher than 4 percent and as low as 3 percent, which probably would be low enough to boost Georgia’s competitiveness while keeping our tax base diversified (income, sales, property, etc.).
As you may recall, the latter plan was stalled in the Legislature in 2011 and last year resulted in a tax bill that was advertised as “comprehensive” but in fact merely tweaked some corporate tax breaks and granted a number of long-time wishes of certain industries (e.g., auto dealers). I’ve heard no one suggest that tax reform will come anywhere near this year’s legislative session agenda.
Meanwhile, Louisiana is pressing forward in the direction taken by Florida, Tennessee and Texas — the kind of states with which Georgia competes for jobs and workers. In North Carolina, another of our peer states, new Gov. Pat McCrory has also pledged to pursue tax changes that include lower income-tax rates for individuals and businesses.
All of which would seem to leave Georgia falling behind.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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217 comments Add your comment
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
January 11th, 2013
3:59 pm
“Also top tax rates in the 50’s were around 91 percent.”
On far fewer people.
“And the black man and minorities and women knew their place !!!!”
Ahhh. The race card. Used by the ignorant when they have nothing else to say.
Kyle Wingfield
January 11th, 2013
3:59 pm
JamVet @ 3:54: I see your tap-dancing has bought you enough time to find a criticism of a Tax Foundation study. Unfortunately, it’s not the study I linked. Keep dancing!
Kyle Wingfield
January 11th, 2013
4:01 pm
But given your professed devotion to the language, JamVet, here’s a question for you: Does your “basic respect for the language,” which allows no one to “make up their own definitions,” extend to the word “marriage”?
Cheesy Grits is gone but not forgotten
January 11th, 2013
4:02 pm
Interesting you should bring that in…would you tell me which school(s) and where?
http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/crazy-stuff-theyll-teach-in.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Its sourced all over the net.
I have no doubt that its accurate.
Louisiana governor (and retired exorcist) Bobby Jindal has signed an aggressive charter school bill that will transfer millions in tax dollars to religious academies run by evolution-denying, homophobic, climate-change-denying Christian extremists. Mother Jones’s Deanna Pan went for a dig through these schools’ official texts and discovered that Louisiana’s publicly funded education system will soon tell some of its luckiest students that the KKK “achieved a certain respectability” by fighting bootleggers; “the majority of slave holders treated their slaves well;” dragons might be real; “dinosaurs and humans were definitely on the earth at the same time,” and many other fun facts.
josef
January 11th, 2013
4:02 pm
KYLE
Not to bring my issues with some of the posters from Big Daddy’s verandah on to yours where I’m a guest. but when it comes to dancing a two-step, you’re talking to the master thereof there!
MarkV
January 11th, 2013
4:03 pm
I can’t help but enjoy the reversal of the usual roles. Usually it is the cons that dismiss any arguments they do not like if the source is PolitiFact, because of the presumed ties to a lib donor. Never mind the fact cited. This time it is a lib doing that with Tax Foundation data, and Kyle is up in arms that anybody would use such a reprehensible argument. Hilarious.
JamVet
January 11th, 2013
4:03 pm
Lil Tibby, stay out of the adult’s conversation.
For once.
Kyle doesn’t need your pathetic “help”…
Rafe Hollister preparing for an Obamanist America
January 11th, 2013
4:03 pm
First, a government school, like charters, can not teach advocate religion. I would prefer schools stick to teaching the three R’s and leave most everything else to the parents and churches.
However, many parents are given the choice of sending their children to private religious schools or having them exposed to government liberal indoctrination. Many protestants and Jewish people choose to send their children to Catholic schools and vice versa for a better more academic based education and just to keep them away from the indoctrination that comes standard in a government school.
Cheesy Grits is gone but not forgotten
January 11th, 2013
4:05 pm
Had forgotten Jindal had performed a few exorcisms.
Would have loved to been a fly on that wall.
Thats good entertainment.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
January 11th, 2013
4:05 pm
indigo – The Bible is an interpretation of God’s Word, written by man. Nobody knows for sure if, on the seventh day, God rested. We weren’t there to check it out for ourselves. The Bible was also written in 800 BC, if I’m remembering correctly, so yes, some of the scriptures will not include a Prius or any other lib wonders of the world.
That being said, next time you wander through the Scriptures cherry picking those you find incredulous and funny, try reading the New Testament and see how they describe the fools of the day. Now that’s something we can all agree on, isn’t it?
Kyle Wingfield
January 11th, 2013
4:05 pm
MarkV @ 4:03: I can’t speak for others, but I have never dismissed PolitiFact out of hand due to any of its associations. I have criticized some of its rulings and given my reasons for doing so … just as I have asked JamVet to do in this case. So, I don’t see how any roles are reversed today.
indigo
January 11th, 2013
4:08 pm
Aesop – 4:05
Shakespear was also very good at describing the “fools of the day”
That, however, does not make his words inspired by God.
josef
January 11th, 2013
4:08 pm
CHEESY
And in which schools in which parishes have these been used.
I would suggest you look into the use of the charter school concept to fund schools aimed at preserving, protecting, developing and expanding French language schools in the state. You might also want to check into the use of the charter concept to do the same with the Creek language.
Charter schools are what we, that means you and I, make of them.
You say “will transfer” funds. I will agree that it “can” but the “will” part assumes that the “can” potential has become fait accompli, and I am interested, seriously, in seeing where and how much.
Rafe Hollister preparing for an Obamanist America
January 11th, 2013
4:09 pm
“I think he’s a pompous a*s,” Ed Koch, speaking about Thomas Friedman.
Dusty
January 11th, 2013
4:10 pm
OH my my I’d better hurry. This is getting to be more like the Ok Corral. With JamVet trying to “show off”, Cheesy trying to be smart, and Finn trying to be snappy, it aint no fun here. Too bad those folks can’t get their own job instead of trying to tell Kyle how to run his. And those three couldn’t run a lemonade stand.
Anyway, JOSEF mentioned Michelle Rhee who was giving a command performance with Washington DC schools. Of course, that was like turning the tide around. KInda hard to do. She left. Don’t know how they did it but she is gone from there.
For a brief moment let us retreat to the English countryside. MARK V, do tell me what happened at Downton Abbey this last time. Don’t spare me the fervor or the falls. I can take it!!
JamVet
January 11th, 2013
4:11 pm
Never said it was, and I found it long before i spent more energy on keystrokes trying to get you to acknowledge your intellectual dishonesty vis a vis the word slander.
But to your point, in this case yes i did shoot the messenger and not the message.
And here is a cite from a book which is apparently not that heavily used by you! (Ya slanderer! LOL!)
marriage -noun
1a – the social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc. Antonyms: separation.
1b – a similar institution involving partners of the same gender: gay marriage.
Is that they answer you were looking for?
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
January 11th, 2013
4:11 pm
I think he’s an idiot.
Matt Taibbi, speaking about Thomas Friedman.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
January 11th, 2013
4:13 pm
“Kyle doesn’t need your pathetic “help”…”
You’re finally right, AmVet.
He’s kicking your sorry a$$ all over his blog, son.
JamVet
January 11th, 2013
4:13 pm
Dusty, grow up see my 4:03 to tibby.
Michael H. Smith
January 11th, 2013
4:14 pm
Hilarious! brucie, corporations/businesses absolutely do not absorb any taxes they pay. If you just have to call it an “expense” to fit your syntactical ideology, so be it; but that tax expense, like ALL other expenses corporations/businesses pay are past onto we the taxpaying/consumers.
The biggest shell game in history is the so-called taxes businesses pay, which are in real terms are pass-through taxes heaped onto we taxpaying/consumers.
If you really want to go after “Corporate Welfare” then attack their taylor-made deductions and regulations. However, you’ll have to become a bi-partisan, because both sides are in bed with Big Corporate Business America: Just the facts brucie… Boooowhaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahaaaa
JamVet
January 11th, 2013
4:14 pm
Then go back and hide under your be and let him finish, grandson…
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
January 11th, 2013
4:14 pm
indigo – I’m pretty sure that Jesus was inspired by God. Have you ever actually read the Bible?
josef
January 11th, 2013
4:19 pm
Cheesy
“The school visited by the president, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology, educates mainly poor African-American children. It stands out as a success story, along with other New Orleans charters, when compared with the city’s traditional public schools, which are still largely classified as failing.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2009/1015/p08s01-comv.html
Cheesy Grits is gone but not forgotten
January 11th, 2013
4:21 pm
indigo – I’m pretty sure that Jesus was inspired by God. Have you ever actually read the Bible?
I have…most of it.
Its one big contradiction.
Cheesy Grits is gone but not forgotten
January 11th, 2013
4:23 pm
http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2012/10/29/failing-charter-finally-closes-and-principal-collects-a-cool-half-million-why-oversight-ought-to-be-important/
Thats one outcome josef
Here is another.
Charter schools have not NOT proven to be anymore effective than public schools.
Thats not what its about anyway.
Its about getting control of the curriculum.
Michael H. Smith
January 11th, 2013
4:24 pm
A *bleep* FLAT income tax is what’s really needed.
Well, you were almost there brucie, just needed the removal of the “P” word which stands for socialist these days and eradicating those phony businesses taxes that we the consumer eventaully pay.
JamVet
January 11th, 2013
4:26 pm
tax expense, like ALL other expenses corporations/businesses pay are past onto we the taxpaying/consumers.
And with that observation, MHS destroys his own argument.
But he will never take that argument to it’s logical conclusion…
josef
January 11th, 2013
4:27 pm
CHEESY
As I pointed out, the charter schools are what we make of them. For many previously unserved groups, it provides the opportunity to focus and develop a curriculum oriented to the specific needs of that community. Two of my own big issues have to do with the French culture of Louisiana and the Southeastern Indians. The charter movement has been a G-dsend there.
MarkV
January 11th, 2013
4:29 pm
Kyle Wingfield @ 4:05 pm
What I meant was a reversal in which sides is making which argument. I never accused you personally of the reversal.
Michael H. Smith
January 11th, 2013
4:30 pm
Wrong brucie, you will never take my winning argument to the logical conclusion.
@@
January 11th, 2013
4:30 pm
DAMN! Just when I thought I was moving further to the right, I discover I’m in agreement with a “Centrist” and Michael H. Smith, with whom I’ve exchanged harsh words….well….not really harsh per se.
So has anybody delved into the success of those countries who’ve adopted the flat tax?
Flat Tax Is Fantasy In U.S. But Works Fine Behind Old Iron Curtain
Okay…so the good ol’ U.S.of A has never existed behind an iron curtain, but it’s all too apparent that dems are lookin’ to bring the hammer down on the producers among us.
Reality
January 11th, 2013
4:30 pm
@Tiberious -
You said, “In Reality’s world, rich people fuel up their private jet and head off to other places to buy their food, clothing, cars, homes, and each and every day-to-day essential they use.”
First of all, I never said those words. Must you lie about others posts so that you can make your (in)valid point?????
Second, it is my world. I have a summer home in Florida and personally know quite a number of those “most wealthy”. They also have second and third homes. Do they purchase their goods in Florida? Heck no. They jet off to one of their other homes in another State and make their purchases where the State sales tax is much much cheaper.
It is reality whether you like it or not and whether you accept it or not.
Dusty
January 11th, 2013
4:31 pm
Uh oh,
JamVet is all uptight. Tried to pick a fight. Made a punch to the right. Kyle turned off his “might”.. OH what a sight! Po’ ‘lil’ Amvet, still uptight!. He just aint bright!
MarkV
January 11th, 2013
4:33 pm
Dusty @ 4:10 pm
Dusty,
I would be happy to do that, but I prefer to do it on the page of the yesterday’s bolog, so that we are not accused of being so much off the subject. I will do it now. Please let me know if that is not convenient.
Michael H. Smith
January 11th, 2013
4:34 pm
@@ ,
Let’s hear your grand argument for ending income taxes altogether, which I’m sure will be the “Fair Tax”?
By the way, a flat tax is not “regressive”.
Michael H. Smith
January 11th, 2013
4:36 pm
Oh and @@,
I’m loaded and ready to explain my reasoning in support of a two tier flat tax.
getalife
January 11th, 2013
4:38 pm
cons are never right so it is a horrible idea.
Reality
January 11th, 2013
4:38 pm
The ultimate logic regarding flat tax and/or lowering taxes on the most wealthy.
The arguement FOR this includes primarily the issue surrounding jobs. They will argue that the ‘most wealthy’ will provide the ‘most jobs’ and will help the middle class. So, we need to reduce their tax rates as much as possible. Am I right so far you con repubs?
So, with any logic such as this, let’s take it to the extreme to see if your reasoning holds. Would you be okay with the ‘most wealthy’ not paying any tax to help your cause? Just think…. if they really do create jobs, then won’t this make unemployment go to 0?
And, in turn, this would shift the tax burden 100% to the others, right?
Guess what this mirrors? Take one guess. I dare you.
Isn’t this pretty much the definition of SLAVERY? Someone working for nothing? The middle class and the ‘others’ will be working with practically all of their paycheck going to pay the 100% of taxes (since the wealthy pay nothing).
Is this really a good thing for America? Didn’t Lincoln settle this long ago?
Reality
January 11th, 2013
4:41 pm
@ Michael H. Smith,
If a flat tax is not regressive. Pray tell – what is your definition of a regressive tax?
I only ask because in every accounting book I have ever seen in my life this fits the definition….
Cheesy Grits is gone but not forgotten
January 11th, 2013
4:44 pm
As I pointed out, the charter schools are what we make of them. For many previously unserved groups, it provides the opportunity to focus and develop a curriculum oriented to the specific needs of that community.
Extremely dangerous.
See Kansas BOE.
I’m sure a creationist would say it was a need of that community.
Most in the community would probably agree.
But its BS and the kids would be the ones to lose.
Michael H. Smith
January 11th, 2013
4:45 pm
Reality
I’m sure your argument fits the claim of some but not me or my reasoning behind a two tier flat, which without deduction the rich with incomes would have to pay. The reason why they would suffer the progressiveness of a higher tier is because those with higher incomes have the louder voice at the ballot box, @@.
@@
January 11th, 2013
4:46 pm
Michael:
I’m a flat taxer, if for no other reason than to defeat the special interests.
I was not opposed to Citizens United because to rule against was the slippery slope to impede my free speech and yours. With a flat tax, the ruling would become moot. No need to influence when there’s nuthin’ coming back to ‘ya.
I’m loaded and ready to explain my reasoning in support of a two tier flat tax.
Be my guest. I’m all @@s.
I’ve seen Hillbilly argue for something along those same lines. I like Hillbilly better than I like you. You come off as arrogant….nothing personal, mind you. Sometimes confidence can be confused with arrogance.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
January 11th, 2013
4:47 pm
“First of all, I never said those words.”
No, you didn’t Reality. You inferred them.
Then you doubled down on the stupid.
indigo
January 11th, 2013
4:48 pm
Aesop
I’ve read the Bible many times.
There is not a shred of evidence it’s inspired by God.
In fact, we don’t even know who wrote it.
@@
January 11th, 2013
4:49 pm
Michael:
The reason why they would suffer the progressiveness of a higher tier is because those with higher incomes have the louder voice at the ballot box, @@.
Don’t get all paranoid like the liberals. I’m @@, not Reality.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
January 11th, 2013
4:49 pm
A flat INCOME tax is regressive.
A flat SALES tax is not.
Michael H. Smith
January 11th, 2013
4:50 pm
Reality
Pray tell you should read a math book occasionally.
Simple example: Which is a greater amount of money 10% of $100 or 10% of $200,000?
Therein is your progressiveness of a flat tax, the more money you make the more dollar amount in tax you pay.
Michael H. Smith
January 11th, 2013
4:51 pm
We disagree Tib
Michael H. Smith
January 11th, 2013
4:57 pm
Don’t get all paranoid like the liberals. I’m @@, not Reality.
I’m not. Just thought I give you my reasoning before the fact.
My greatest problem with a so-called “Fair Tax” is my reason for supporting a two tier flat tax. Most people understand that your money is your voice in politics.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
January 11th, 2013
4:59 pm
We don’t?
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy = Moses – 1400 B.C.
Joshua = Joshua – 1350 B.C.
Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel = Samuel/Nathan/Gad – 1000 – 900 B.C.
1 Kings, 2 Kings = Jeremiah – 600 B.C.
1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah = Ezra – 450 B.C.
Esther = Mordecai – 400 B.C.
Job = Moses – 1400 B.C.
Psalms = several different authors, mostly David – 1000 – 400 B.C.
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon = Solomon – 900 B.C.