A Dilemma

Wisconsin Republicans are negotiating looking up – that is from a weak position:

Those close to the budget talks said there is no agreement yet on whether to carve transportation out of the budget. Supporters of the idea said doing so could speed up passing the rest of the budget to meet an Oct. 15 deadline to avoid a $79 million increase in property taxes for schools in December.

Source: JS Online – Medicaid package lives in Assembly (It's a significant part of deadlocked budget) All the taxers have to do is to hold out and they win! Do you want the kick on your left or right butt-cheek?

The GOP Assembly has been doing as much as they can, but will fail in holding the line on taxes. So now the question comes to which is more destructive and hold that one off.

I suppose after October 15 the Senate Democrats will become more reasonable.

An interesting development – I just got an e-mail from Charlie Sykes talking about some political grandstanding being setup by the Governor and the UW: "If this is not the use of state resources -- and federally protected data -- for political purposes, I don't what would fit the definition.". Read Charlie's blog, quite obviously the woman who was instructed to send it out was not comfortable doing so.

Interesting Advice

Clark Howard is a regular listen of mine. Today in what appeared to be a greatest hits show he had a call from someone selling real estate and the guy was wondering how to transfer his capital gains to avoid paying taxes on it. Clark went through the process, but in the end advised the man to not be so fixated on avoiding capital gains taxes now. In fact, the advice was to take the cash and pay the capital gains tax.

Why? Because capital gains taxes are now at historic lows. So instead of sheltering the cash and then paying much higher capital gains taxes on the money later on to take the cash now and pay the low capital gains tax.

So, what the low rates of taxation do, is to discourage money sheltering and encourage more immediate investment and tax payment. Interesting huh? Still, I have this notion this little story will not take root in the heads I hope it does.

That is low taxes do not necessarily mean low governmental receipts.

A Proposal

The legislature in Wisconsin is tax-happy. Fortunately, the latest tax increase proposal (yes Fred, it is an increase) is DOA even Democrats are not going for it.

Anyway an idea struck me. Our legislators like to tax us all the time. Why not return the favor? Why not ask them to place a tax on the proposal of legislation? A simple flat fee every time someone sponsors a bill into the senate or the assembly or the house of representatives. Lets say a $1,000.00 fee for sponsoring or co-sponsoring a bill.

I would add the following restrictions to paying the bill tax.

1. The fee must not come from the public treasury! That is, a sponsor can not ask the taxpayers to pay it. I would allow the sponsor to write a check on his/her own checking account, accept visa/mastercard/American express/discover, or cash. Payments out of a sponsor's campaign funds are also allowable as long as the sponsor does not participate in any sort of public campaign financing scheme.


2. All sponsorship fees must be paid prior to the bill's introduction.


3. The source of the fee must be fully disclosed

Now, we will not be able to setup a legislators anonymous program with this tax or any such thing but I hope it would make make the costs more real to our legislators.

Vetoing the Cigarette Tax Increase.

Charlie Sykes picks up a story saying Governor Doyle has decided to veto any cigarette tax increase put on his desk. Interesting, wonder what that veto will look like?

Sec 1.02) The department of revenue is directed to increase the tax on cigarattes from $0.77 per pack to $1.25 per pack the revenues thus collected will be allocated per section 1.89 of statute 227...

Yeah he will veto such a bill like he did this one!