Those blasted rich folk have done it again. The wealthiest one percent of taxpayers are going to get most of next year’s kicker, nearly one-fifth, with an average refund check of $4,857.
The poorest 20 percent will get a whopping $8 refund check according to next year’s kicker estimates.
Oregon Center for Public Policy, a liberal think tank in Silverton, also complains that a mere 4 percent of corporations operating in Oregon will reap 93 percent of the coporate kicker tax credit. Multi-state firms will get 86 percent of the credit’s tax value, and less than 14 percent of the tax credit will go to companies that operate only in Oregon.
OCPP’s insinuation is that we should give up our kicker check in favor of developing a rainy day fund to take care of schools and state government during lean times. “Because facts matter” is in OCPP’s logo, and the facts they’ve uncovered prove without a doubt, the rich and corporate are doing it to us poor folk again, just like with President Bush’s tax cut.
The rich will, as always, get more than the poor; and they’ll do it on the backs of the poor, eviscerating such dearly important services as education.
Never fear. Plenty of folks are ready to turn on the fat cats and get rid of the kicker.
The Oregonian editorialized: “Members of a nice church decided to take up a collection to help a destitute family needing four nights of temporary lodging. The pastor guessed his congregation, at best, could raise $300, enough for only three nights. After the collection plate made its rounds, though, it held $400, enough for all four nights.
“But no, the pastor said. The extra $100 was not anticipated. And thus, under a quirky rule unique to the church, it had to be refunded to the congregation.…”
“Yet Oregon will give back all its unanticipated revenue, just like the fictional church’s extra $100 — not because it isn’t desperately needed, but because someone failed to forecast it.
“Had it been forecast, it would be helping to plug a $172 million hole in the human services budget. It would be bolstering public safety and shoring up public schools, including those in Portland facing a ruinous budget gap described elsewhere on this page.”
First off, a church donation is voluntary. Our annual government donation is not.
Second, the state, like nearly all public agencies, will always be underfunded. The state will always take a fifth, sixth or seventh night if it can get away with it.
Oregon Department of Transportation recently hired a diversity manager. This guy is in charge of an entire “Office of Civil Rights.” I don’t know whether that’s one guy or 50. I don’t care. With a title and name like that in our road service, the entire program is pointless and racist to boot.
Though probably funded through the gas tax, this is still one example of how our state chooses to prioritize spending.
And still our state doesn’t have enough money. They might have to cut guys like this in lean years without a rainy day fund.
OCPP suggests that the kicker not only does not help the Oregon economy, but that it hinders it by allowing money to escape the state.
OCPP doesn’t say why this is bad. OCPP doesn’t say why trading with other states is bad. OCPP doesn’t explain where the concepts of comparative advantage break down. Comparative advantage enables trade, creating wealth and values between traders, trades advantageous to both sides in the trade. Although used typically to explain the benefits of free trade between different nations, this concept describes the relationships that make economies work, micro to macro.
OCPP ignores it in favor of preventing the escape of cash and in favor of reduced value to Oregonian traders (consumers and corporations).
“It’s a silly tax break because it’s rewarding people who don’t need a tax break,” OCPP Executive Director Chuck Sheketoff said to the Register Guard. “And it gets in the way of (the state of Oregon) saving for a rainy day.”
All of this is beside the most important point: It’s not the state’s money. It doesn’t belong to OCPP. It doesn’t belong to local school districts. It’s yours. You earned it. It is your labor. It is your time, and it is yours to use as you please; and by all means, donate it to the state if you’re so inclined.
Sheketoff presumes that the money belongs to the state, to the general public, but not to the folks who earned it and traded parts of their lives for it. Those folks just get in the way.
From the esteemed freedom-loving Cascade Policy Institute’s Kurt T. Weber: “Some argue, government needs a rainy day fund just like businesses or families. But there’s a major difference between you and I putting money aside — it’s our money. Further, we set our own priorities. Politicians take our money, and dictate our priorities.”
OCPP talks about the huge sums of money the rich will get. OCPP never talks about how much the rich pay in the first place. The poorest 20 percent of taxpayers don’t pay enough taxes to get much back in the first place. Sounds like OCPP thinks the rich should take care of the poor because they are rich. Letting them have their own money back is nothing less than a “reward.”
It’s just the same sort of language socialists used about President’s Bush’s tax cut, but the rich are the ones who pay the most taxes. No matter what, any across-the-board tax cut will give them the biggest refund.
The poorest get nothing back at all, but they never paid in the first place. Under normal circumstances, get high enough in the lowest tax brackets, and those folks can not only get back every federal dime withheld from their paychecks, they can use earned income credit to get even more money, with a net negative tax burden.
Like the personal tax, what OCPP calls a disproportionate share of the corporate kicker, multi-state corporations will receive most of the money. That hints again at the reverse. It really shows that those same multi-state firms, like rich individuals, are shouldering the largest part of the tax burden in Oregon.
But OCPP put together enough “facts” to suggest that poor folks and home-state corporations are getting the short end of the stick on the kicker.
Socialists and politicians make it about the rich and the poor, the haves and the have nots, but they don’t differentiate when it comes to your money. They want it all, everyone’s kicker, every dime they can get.