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Democrats in High-Tax States Plot to Blunt Impact of New Tax Law

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HTX

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Found this article quite interesting...

Per NY Times: Democrats in High-Tax States Plot to Blunt Impact of New Tax Law

I found this comment particularly telling:

I suppose the rational response for us is to lower our taxes,” said Benjamin Barnes, who heads the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management, “but we have a public that has shown again and again that they expect high levels of service.
Click to expand...

If the public is in clear support of maintaining various programs, then being up front about the fact that the public has to pay for them shouldn't be an issue. While some of the ideas are intriguing the bottom line appears to be that Democrats at the state level seem to recognize that their taxes are too high when no longer fully subsidized by the Federal government. If the public truly supports these programs as claimed, there shouldn't be a pressing need to figure out a way to "game the system" to try to hide the impact on a person's overall tax bill.

The same Connecticut person follows up with this:

Our first line of defense,” Mr. Barnes, the Connecticut official, said, “is to take back Congress for Democrats.
Click to expand...

In other words, the argument here is that it is imperative that Democrats retake Congress so that local Democrats don't have to confront their high tax policies now that they will no longer be fully subsidized by the Federal government.
 
HTX said:
Found this article quite interesting...

Per NY Times: Democrats in High-Tax States Plot to Blunt Impact of New Tax Law

I found this comment particularly telling:



If the public is in clear support of maintaining various programs, then being up front about the fact that the public has to pay for them shouldn't be an issue. While some of the ideas are intriguing the bottom line appears to be that Democrats at the state level seem to recognize that their taxes are too high when no longer fully subsidized by the Federal government. If the public truly supports these programs as claimed, there shouldn't be a pressing need to figure out a way to "game the system" to try to hide the impact on a person's overall tax bill.

The same Connecticut person follows up with this:



In other words, the argument here is that it is imperative that Democrats retake Congress so that local Democrats don't have to confront their high tax policies now that they will no longer be fully subsidized by the Federal government.
Click to expand...

The high tax blue states subsidize the low tax red states. If you live in one, you are the one taking money from the liberals.
 
trblmkr said:
The high tax blue states subsidize the low tax red states. If you live in one, you are the one taking money from the liberals.
Click to expand...

While it is interesting to hear Democrats demand an ever more progressive taxation system at the individual level and then scream about how unfair it is at the state level...this is a misrepresentation of the data. You make it sound like "red" states are failing due to their economic policies and therefore the federal funds that flow to them are needed to offset this policy failure. The reality is somewhat different.

These claims never account for cost of living differences between various states and never get into the weeds of just what a lot of this federal money coming to the states actually is. Included in the overall spending to justify "red" states "mooching" (not your word but used in print by others) off of "blue" states is things like defense spending, social security and medicare payments (allegedly "earned" benefits), agricultural subsidies and a myriad of other programs of course.

If someone works in New York for example and then opts to retire in Florida - in a vacuum Florida will show additional federal funds flowing to them simply due to social security and medicare payments. That doesn't mean that New York should be entitled to an offset for those funds - nor does it mean that Florida is "taking" money from blue states.

It is nowhere near as cut and dry as just "blue states subsidize red states" and therefore blue state policies - whatever they happen to be - are superior. There is no provable causal link there.

A good read on the issue:
Are Red States Tax Takers And Blue States Tax Makers?
 
HTX said:
While it is interesting to hear Democrats demand an ever more progressive taxation system at the individual level and then scream about how unfair it is at the state level...this is a misrepresentation of the data. You make it sound like "red" states are failing due to their economic policies and therefore the federal funds that flow to them are needed to offset this policy failure. The reality is somewhat different.

These claims never account for cost of living differences between various states and never get into the weeds of just what a lot of this federal money coming to the states actually is. Included in the overall spending to justify "red" states "mooching" (not your word but used in print by others) off of "blue" states is things like defense spending, social security and medicare payments (allegedly "earned" benefits), agricultural subsidies and a myriad of other programs of course.

If someone works in New York for example and then opts to retire in Florida - in a vacuum Florida will show additional federal funds flowing to them simply due to social security and medicare payments. That doesn't mean that New York should be entitled to an offset for those funds - nor does it mean that Florida is "taking" money from blue states.

It is nowhere near as cut and dry as just "blue states subsidize red states" and therefore blue state policies - whatever they happen to be - are superior. There is no provable causal link there.

A good read on the issue:
Are Red States Tax Takers And Blue States Tax Makers?
Click to expand...

It was somewhat arbitrary for the red state Congress to decide to negate a blue state exemption and at the same time increase a standard deduction that would benefit red states. Since the tax bill was rammed through with no congressional interaction, it seems reasonable for blue states (and their millions of taxpaying citizens) to question the fairness of all of this. Most of the defense of the tax bill is of the nah nah nah nah nah variety .
But this is a horse that has been beaten more than dead here over the past month or two I've been around, so not expecting any new insight. Maybe I'll be surprised.
 
JMR said:
It was somewhat arbitrary for the red state Congress to decide to negate a blue state exemption and at the same time increase a standard deduction that would benefit red states. Since the tax bill was rammed through with no congressional interaction, it seems reasonable for blue states (and their millions of taxpaying citizens) to question the fairness of all of this. Most of the defense of the tax bill is of the nah nah nah nah nah variety .
But this is a horse that has been beaten more than dead here over the past month or two I've been around, so not expecting any new insight. Maybe I'll be surprised.
Click to expand...
The American Revolution came about due to taxation without representation. Today, we have have taxation with under-representation. The Senate is dominated by red states since all states, regardless of population, receive two Senators. Meanwhile, red states complain about taxation while accepting Medicaid and other programs used by their poor, paid by blue states. West Virginia has a relatively old population, so 22% of its residents are on Medicare, versus 16.7% for the nation as a whole. It’s also a state that has benefited hugely from Obamacare, with the percentage of the population lacking health insurance falling from 14% in 2013 to 6% in 2015; these gains came mainly from a big expansion of Medicaid.

It’s true that the nation as a whole pays for these health care programs with taxes. But an older, poorer state like West Virginia receives much more than it pays in -- and it would have received virtually none of the tax cuts Trumpcare, if it passed, would have lavished on the wealthy. Republicans’ red-state bias may seem like just more of the same. After all, their last big legislative drive — the Senate health bill, Graham-Cassidy, which failed in September — also sought a major transfer of resources from blue states that had done a good job expanding health insurance to red states that hadn’t. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, derided that bill as “petty politics” — “just taking the Obamacare money, keeping it and taking it from Democratic states and giving it to Republican states.”

Novelist Ayn Rand is cherished by Paul Ryan. As Ayn put it, under democracy “one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority.” That gang is the Republican majority which legitimizes this exploitation; itself an engine of injustice.

So, the blue states, that have the smartest tax lawyers and accountants, are responding to the GOP's rushed law that was incompletely thought through. Had there been hearings and time spent going over details, they would have closed the loopholes. Now, blue states will figure out how to shield themselves, resulting is less revenue than anticipated.
 
JMR said:
It was somewhat arbitrary for the red state Congress to decide to negate a blue state exemption and at the same time increase a standard deduction that would benefit red states. Since the tax bill was rammed through with no congressional interaction, it seems reasonable for blue states (and their millions of taxpaying citizens) to question the fairness of all of this. Most of the defense of the tax bill is of the nah nah nah nah nah variety .
But this is a horse that has been beaten more than dead here over the past month or two I've been around, so not expecting any new insight. Maybe I'll be surprised.
Click to expand...
the standard deduction benefits blue states as well as there are middle income and lower income people all over the place.

The federal government really just set the base income in the US at 24k dollars.
and 15k respectedly.

that doesn't include doubling the child tax credit.
then there is a the EIC credit as well that has to be factored in.
 
MTAtech said:
The American Revolution came about due to taxation without representation. Today, we have have taxation with under-representation. The Senate is dominated by red states since all states, regardless of population, receive two Senators. Meanwhile, red states complain about taxation while accepting Medicaid and other programs used by their poor, paid by blue states. West Virginia has a relatively old population, so 22% of its residents are on Medicare, versus 16.7% for the nation as a whole. It’s also a state that has benefited hugely from Obamacare, with the percentage of the population lacking health insurance falling from 14% in 2013 to 6% in 2015; these gains came mainly from a big expansion of Medicaid.

It’s true that the nation as a whole pays for these health care programs with taxes. But an older, poorer state like West Virginia receives much more than it pays in -- and it would have received virtually none of the tax cuts Trumpcare, if it passed, would have lavished on the wealthy. Republicans’ red-state bias may seem like just more of the same. After all, their last big legislative drive — the Senate health bill, Graham-Cassidy, which failed in September — also sought a major transfer of resources from blue states that had done a good job expanding health insurance to red states that hadn’t. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, derided that bill as “petty politics” — “just taking the Obamacare money, keeping it and taking it from Democratic states and giving it to Republican states.”

Novelist Ayn Rand is cherished by Paul Ryan. As Ayn put it, under democracy “one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority.” That gang is the Republican majority which legitimizes this exploitation; itself an engine of injustice.

So, the blue states, that have the smartest tax lawyers and accountants, are responding to the GOP's rushed law that was incompletely thought through. Had there been hearings and time spent going over details, they would have closed the loopholes. Now, blue states will figure out how to shield themselves, resulting is less revenue than anticipated.
Click to expand...

and up until a few years ago it was dominated by blue states because regardless of population blue states receive two senators.
there is a reason for that. all states no matter the size are equal in power. the senate does not represent the population of the state but the state itself.

yes and WV has a democrat population of 2:1.

what you said of ayn rand can be said of any majority not just republicans.
i do believe that obamacare was rammed down everyone's throat by that same majority that you speak of.

no judge in their right mind would allow them to make forced charitable donations to the state and not take it as at tax.
obama tried that same nonsense with obamacare in calling it a penalty yet it was implemented under tax law.
 
ludin said:
and up until a few years ago it was dominated by blue states because regardless of population blue states receive two senators.
there is a reason for that. all states no matter the size are equal in power. the senate does not represent the population of the state but the state itself.

yes and WV has a democrat population of 2:1.

what you said of ayn rand can be said of any majority not just republicans.
i do believe that obamacare was rammed down everyone's throat by that same majority that you speak of.

no judge in their right mind would allow them to make forced charitable donations to the state and not take it as at tax.
obama tried that same nonsense with obamacare in calling it a penalty yet it was implemented under tax law.
Click to expand...

You are just reciting the way things are, regarding Senate representation. I am saying that it is fundamentally unfair that one state has equal power to another state with dozens of more people.

Obamacare was debated for a year; had numerous hearings; Republicans had input and amendments. In no rational world could it be considered "rammed" the way the GOP rammed through their tax law.

And yet, the SCOTUS agreed with Obama.
 
MTAtech said:
The American Revolution came about due to taxation without representation. Today, we have have taxation with under-representation. The Senate is dominated by red states since all states, regardless of population, receive two Senators. Meanwhile, red states complain about taxation while accepting Medicaid and other programs used by their poor, paid by blue states. West Virginia has a relatively old population, so 22% of its residents are on Medicare, versus 16.7% for the nation as a whole. It’s also a state that has benefited hugely from Obamacare, with the percentage of the population lacking health insurance falling from 14% in 2013 to 6% in 2015; these gains came mainly from a big expansion of Medicaid.

It’s true that the nation as a whole pays for these health care programs with taxes. But an older, poorer state like West Virginia receives much more than it pays in -- and it would have received virtually none of the tax cuts Trumpcare, if it passed, would have lavished on the wealthy. Republicans’ red-state bias may seem like just more of the same. After all, their last big legislative drive — the Senate health bill, Graham-Cassidy, which failed in September — also sought a major transfer of resources from blue states that had done a good job expanding health insurance to red states that hadn’t. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, derided that bill as “petty politics” — “just taking the Obamacare money, keeping it and taking it from Democratic states and giving it to Republican states.”

Novelist Ayn Rand is cherished by Paul Ryan. As Ayn put it, under democracy “one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority.” That gang is the Republican majority which legitimizes this exploitation; itself an engine of injustice.

So, the blue states, that have the smartest tax lawyers and accountants, are responding to the GOP's rushed law that was incompletely thought through. Had there been hearings and time spent going over details, they would have closed the loopholes. Now, blue states will figure out how to shield themselves, resulting is less revenue than anticipated.
Click to expand...

Thank God for the revolution, or the government would have us all yoked to oxen!

And a $24k deduction isn’t all that hot in California unless you are middle class, and the middle class is not who runs California. It’s Silicon Valley’s wealth and the public unions.

Also, California uses the federal return to compute state taxes so it’s an open question of what California plans to do. They are going rogue on Immigration, so they may as well go rogue on taxes, too.
 
trblmkr said:
The high tax blue states subsidize the low tax red states. If you live in one, you are the one taking money from the liberals.
Click to expand...

Personally, I have always thought that states should tax and pay for all state programs themselves. That all federal programs should be taxed and paid for at the federal level. That the two shouldn't be mixed. I never was a big fan of revenue sharing either. Let each state keep the taxes they levy and pay for their own programs. A person from New York should have to pay a tax for a program in Utah unless is a federal program. Then that person in New York ought to be paying federal taxes for it instead of state taxes. That the same program ought to be available in New York as in Utah. simple enough.
 
MTAtech said:
You are just reciting the way things are, regarding Senate representation. I am saying that it is fundamentally unfair that one state has equal power to another state with dozens of more people.
Click to expand...

Do you not understand how our government is setup? I question this because this statement shows that you really don't understand or don't want to understand.
Our government is setup in 2 parts for the legislature. There is the house and there is the senate. The House is representation of the people. Every census the population of the states are calculated.
per the constitution all states get 1 rep. the remaining seats are given out in priority up to the their population size.

This is where states with bigger population get their voice.

next up is the senate. The senate contrary to this myth floating around has absolutely nothing to do with population size.
It has to do with the state itself. Per the constitution all states are equal in power. IE it doesn't matter if you have 50m people living in your state
your state has the same power of someone with 20m people.

Obamacare was debated for a year; had numerous hearings; Republicans had input and amendments. In no rational world could it be considered "rammed" the way the GOP rammed through their tax law.
Click to expand...


sure it was. the GOP had 0 input on it other than defining some words here and there.
And yet, the SCOTUS agreed with Obama.
Click to expand...


no they didn't obama called it a penalty. the SCOTUS called it a tax.

there is no way that states are going to make forced charitable contributions to them tax deductible.
that isn't charity that is a tax.
 
MTAtech said:
The American Revolution came about due to taxation without representation. Today, we have have taxation with under-representation. The Senate is dominated by red states since all states, regardless of population, receive two Senators. Meanwhile, red states complain about taxation while accepting Medicaid and other programs used by their poor, paid by blue states. West Virginia has a relatively old population, so 22% of its residents are on Medicare, versus 16.7% for the nation as a whole. It’s also a state that has benefited hugely from Obamacare, with the percentage of the population lacking health insurance falling from 14% in 2013 to 6% in 2015; these gains came mainly from a big expansion of Medicaid.

It’s true that the nation as a whole pays for these health care programs with taxes. But an older, poorer state like West Virginia receives much more than it pays in --

...
Click to expand...

In other words, the system works exactly as Democrats want the Federal tax system to work, i.e. the people with the money fund the programs for the people without the money.
 
Critter7r said:
In other words, the system works exactly as Democrats want the Federal tax system to work, i.e. the people with the money fund the programs for the people without the money.
Click to expand...
Not exactly. Millionaires in states like Florida get a benefit that millionaires in states like New York do not.
 
ludin said:
Do you not understand how our government is setup? I question this because this statement shows that you really don't understand or don't want to understand.
...
Click to expand...

You are stating what the policy is, while I am arguing why the policy is unfair.
 
MTAtech said:
You are stating what the policy is, while I am arguing why the policy is unfair.
Click to expand...

no the policy isn't unfair. you remember that thing about equal rights?
all states are equal. your opinion of what is fair or not is irrelevant.

and am not stating the policy i am stating the constitution.
 
MTAtech said:
Not exactly. Millionaires in states like Florida get a benefit that millionaires in states like New York do not.
Click to expand...

Not really it depends on where you live in FL. there are place with some pretty high property taxes here.
the 10k cap applies to them as well.

along with any sales tax deduction they would take. as we do not have a state income tax.
 
ludin said:
no the policy isn't unfair. you remember that thing about equal rights?
all states are equal. your opinion of what is fair or not is irrelevant.

and am not stating the policy i am stating the constitution.
Click to expand...
That may have worked well in 1789, when the biggest state was Virginia, at 747,610 people compared to the smallest state, Delaware, at 59,094. Now, the it's far out of wack, with Vermont’s 625,000 residents having 30 times the voting power in the Senate of New York’s 19 million. The nation’s largest gap, between Wyoming and California, is more than double that.
 
MTAtech said:
That may have worked well in 1789, when the biggest state was Virginia, at 747,610 people compared to the smallest state, Delaware, at 59,094. Now, the it's far out of wack, with Vermont’s 625,000 residents having 30 times the voting power in the Senate of New York’s 19 million. The nation’s largest gap, between Wyoming and California, is more than double that.
Click to expand...

it still works today.
that is why there is the house of reps.

that is why CA gets 51 reps to ND 1.

the senate doesn't care about population because it doesn't represent the people.
 
MTAtech said:
That may have worked well in 1789, when the biggest state was Virginia, at 747,610 people compared to the smallest state, Delaware, at 59,094. Now, the it's far out of wack, with Vermont’s 625,000 residents having 30 times the voting power in the Senate of New York’s 19 million. The nation’s largest gap, between Wyoming and California, is more than double that.
Click to expand...

Then amend the constitution - there is a process for it. I don't expect it will go very far however.
 
MTAtech said:
That may have worked well in 1789, when the biggest state was Virginia, at 747,610 people compared to the smallest state, Delaware, at 59,094. Now, the it's far out of wack, with Vermont’s 625,000 residents having 30 times the voting power in the Senate of New York’s 19 million. The nation’s largest gap, between Wyoming and California, is more than double that.
Click to expand...

The two chambers, one focused on making sure all states are heard equally, and the other balanced based on population, is a key part of the genius of the founders design.

Presumably you think it's equality unfair that in the House, Vermont has a single vote, compared to New York's 27 ?

Seems like we have the proportions just about right.
 
HTX said:
Found this article quite interesting...

Per NY Times: Democrats in High-Tax States Plot to Blunt Impact of New Tax Law

I found this comment particularly telling:



If the public is in clear support of maintaining various programs, then being up front about the fact that the public has to pay for them shouldn't be an issue. While some of the ideas are intriguing the bottom line appears to be that Democrats at the state level seem to recognize that their taxes are too high when no longer fully subsidized by the Federal government. If the public truly supports these programs as claimed, there shouldn't be a pressing need to figure out a way to "game the system" to try to hide the impact on a person's overall tax bill.

The same Connecticut person follows up with this:



In other words, the argument here is that it is imperative that Democrats retake Congress so that local Democrats don't have to confront their high tax policies now that they will no longer be fully subsidized by the Federal government.
Click to expand...

Bad guys plot, good guys plan.
 
MTAtech said:
Not exactly. Millionaires in states like Florida get a benefit that millionaires in states like New York do not.
Click to expand...

But they got that benefit prior to the tax cut, didn't they? Florida just has no income tax. That was a benefit prior to the removal of the SALT deduction. By that token, New Yorkers were previously getting a benefit that Floridians weren't: the ability to lower their federal tax burden by subtracting their state income tax.
 
MTAtech said:
You are stating what the policy is, while I am arguing why the policy is unfair.
Click to expand...

And what is your solution to this great injustice you perceive?
 
ludin said:
the standard deduction benefits blue states as well as there are middle income and lower income people all over the place.

The federal government really just set the base income in the US at 24k dollars.
and 15k respectedly.

that doesn't include doubling the child tax credit.
then there is a the EIC credit as well that has to be factored in.
Click to expand...

There seems to be a unreasonable resistance to considering that removing deductions for state and local and property taxes (items that have been deductible for a VERY long time) might cause hardships for many people...locked into the evil territory of blue states... and whenever that is brought up, there follows the ugly comments about the elites, etc. The fact that this will adversely affect housing markets and the slowly recovering economy is major metropolitan areas is overlooked, and shouted down, but what happens in those areas will eventually affect everyone.

This tax plan was rammed through without consideration and much thought..the great hurry??? so it could be an arbitrary Christmas present for Trump. Now there will be court cases and other attempts to make it more fair....which was the original job of the Congress. They should have done their job
 
This problem is easily fixed.

The high taxed states are going bankrupt by government pension schemes wherein retirees retire after 25 years of sitting on their butts only to move to a low taxed state to retire in luxury for the next 40 years to escape the taxes their pensions are draining.

Here is is: make the government pensioners live in the states whose taxpayers they are raping. Put an ankle bracelet on them to make sure they comply.
 
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