Tax Windfall or Not – State Leaders should Prepare a “Rainy Day” Fund.
California taxpayers paid $5 billion more in taxes in January than state officials anticipated. So is this an early sign of a robust economic recovery, or simply taxpayers paying in advance of when the bean-counters expected? I lean toward the latter, since both tax changes and tax uncertainty have been far more apparent than widespread […]
A Principled Conservative Raises California Taxes
In his 1977 address to CPAC titled, The New Republican Party Ronald Reagan asks, “Isn’t it possible to combine the two major segments of contemporary American conservatism [social and economic] into one politically effective whole?” Reagan says , “I envision not simply a melding… into an uneasy alliance, but the creation of a new, lasting […]
Drill, Dude, Drill
Yesterday the New York Times reported that the Monterey Shale, in California’s Central Valley, may be sitting on as much as 14.5 billion barrels of oil. Previously unreachable, modern ‘fracking’ technology has now put them within reach. As we’ve seen in states like North Dakota, with its Bakken Shale, fracking can bring an immediate boom […]
Tax Reform in the Red Zone
This Wednesday, the Ad-Hoc Committee on Business Tax Reform will meet for the first time to begin the formal process of phasing in reform of the gross receipts tax once and for all. This committee, chaired by L.A. City Councilmember Paul Krekorian and Vice-Chair Eric Garcetti, will build on the work done by the Business […]