One More Tax to Pay Before Tax Day
A new law, which might take the prize for the worst piece of legislation in 2009, requires nearly 200,000 California businesses to register and file use tax payments with the Board of Equalization (BOE) by April 15th. This onerous regulation will cost more to comply with – because of the unbelievable inconvenience it causes business owners – than the state will make in revenue.
The new law requires all business owners with gross revenue over $100,000, that are not already registered with the BOE, to register for a use tax account and file use tax returns for 2007, 2008, 2009, and for every year in the future.
That’s right: three years of filings will be due on the same day taxpayers must file state and federal income tax and payroll taxes.
AB 4x 18 was signed into law in July 2009. The Board rushed to begin implementation in November 2009, but many businesses received the news as late as mid-March 2010, and more have yet to be notified. If you haven’t received a letter and your business makes over $100,000 in gross revenue, it is your responsibility to register and file use tax returns by April 15th.
The Cooley Effect on Editorials
An interesting editorial in the Los
Angeles Times yesterday in which the Times editorial board charged that the
Steve Cooley for Attorney General campaign boasted about an earlier negative
Times editorial on Cooley under the assumption that if the Times says Cooley is
bad, he must be okay.
All the hammering the mainstream media has received over the
last couple of decades, certainly some justified, has set up a scenario for
many readers that if a newspaper says one thing, believe the opposite.
Yesterday’s Times editorial recognized the inherent
contradiction in trying to analyze the motives of this reverse psychology:
Brown, Black Holes and the Chamber Ad
Every time I read about the Large Hadron Collider, the huge new particle accelerator in Switzerland where they’re crashing protons together to make black holes so physicists can learn more about the nature of the universe, I think of Jerry Brown.
And not merely because of his interest in advanced technology. Brown is capable of creating vacuums all by himself.
The latest exhibit is the Chamber of Commerce’s now-withdrawn ad about Brown’s first governorship. Now let’s be clear: the ad was fundamentally dishonest. It criticized Brown for opposing Prop 13 but then blamed him for big increases in state spending and a state deficit that were the direct result of Prop 13. The chamber should have picked a lane.
But – and this is a big but – there was no small measure of justice in this injustice to the Brown campaign. The fact that Jerry Brown can be attacked this way is Jerry Brown’s fault.
Immigration – The status quo is simply not sustainable
It is a truth universally
acknowledged that President
Reagan’s immigration package would have no chance of passing in today’s
hyper-partisan climate regardless of who controls Congress. Most members of the Gipper’s own party now
refer to it as the dirty word "amnesty" while a majority of their esteemed
colleagues wonder how to couple a pathway to citizenship with tougher
enforcement measures. But whether
it is former Rep. Tom Tancredo’s pride, Poizner’s perceived immigrant
prejudice or simply the anger of a different kind of afternoon tea party,
chances are slim that comprehensive immigration reform will happen in 2010.
Despite promises to many in the
immigrant rights community, especially Latinos that came out for him in droves
in 2008, the Obama administration appears reluctant to wage another big public
policy battle. Overhauling our
national immigration system and creating a new national energy policy were supposed
to be next in line. But if the
punditocracy thought the political capital credit card was maxed out after the
bruising battle over healthcare, now the Senate and Team Obama will be consumed
over the summer on winning confirmation of a new Supreme Court nominee. And there is no way either side,
despite the bipartisanship
of Senators Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Lindsay Graham (R-South
Carolina), will go anywhere near immigration going into the final stretch of
the election season.