Articles tagged as

Taxes

Money_Black_Hole

Obituary for a Carbon Credit Scheme

In the movie Tootsie, Bill Murray’s character is a playwright who has a running conversation with Dustin Hoffman about a scene he’s writing, “the necktie scene,” that’s just not working. He finally surrenders to Hoffman’s diagnosis of the problem, “I’m rewriting the necktie scene without the necktie.” I was reminded of this joke when I saw … Read more

Taxing Unrealized Capital Gains and an Inflation Nexus

Among the various new taxes proposed by Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign are increased levies on capital gains and taxation of unrealized capital gains on wealthy Americans. Given recent history, this is particularly sneaky. The Biden-Harris team sparked rapid inflation, so now the Harris-Waltz duo wants to tax the phantom inflationary gain even before citizens holding … Read more

andru volinsky edelblut Education

Santayana Warned Us About Volinsky

A few sentences into his recent piece in InDepthNH (and other places), Andru Volinsky demonstrates that he has no idea how the statewide education tax actually works, let alone how it should work.   First, no one gets excused from paying anything. Every district collects the full SWEPT tax, spends it on adequacy, and applies … Read more

empty chairs classroom

How School Funding Works (Part 4)

As mentioned in [Part 1], the most straightforward (and least Marxist) way to fund schools would be to use a uniform (per capita) tax.  You take the budget, divide it by the number of taxpayers, and that’s the tax each one pays. But even that ends up implementing a sort of reverse Marxism, taking money … Read more

Cartoon hit with taxes

Taxes, Taxes, Taxes

By Jane L Johnson | Mises Wire – No American politician running for office wants to talk about taxes—unless, of course, it’s to promise a tax cut. No Misesian views taxes with anything but suspicion, and Mises himself held some principled views on taxes: Taxes are necessary. But the system of discriminatory taxation universally accepted under the misleading … Read more

How school funding works (Part 2, EFAs)

Okay, so given what we saw in Part 1, let’s consider what happens when a student leaves each of the two districts to open an Education Freedom Account (EFA). In District 1, what changes?  Things that change are highlighted below:   Before After Taxpayers 1000 1000 Students 100 99 Budget $2M $2M Adequacy $400,000 $396,000 … Read more

classroom empty desks original Image by WOKANDAPIX from Pixabay

How School Funding Works (Part 1)

One of the things that allows so much nonsense to be bandied about when discussing school funding is that almost no one — including legislators, judges, and DoE officials — seems to understand how SWEPT (Statewide education property taxes) and adequacy grants are related. In what follows, I’ll use nice round numbers that approximate but … Read more

EV Fees Should Go to Road Maintenance and Repair

The recent—and unfortunately more regular—flooding Vermont has experienced since last summer has damaged a lot of infrastructure, but the impact on our roads due to washouts is a big one—and an expensive one for the state and local municipalities. This raises a critical question of where the money is going to come from to fix … Read more

Cartoon hit with taxes

How About a Legislators Tax?

Bureaucracies don’t bloat themselves, so the more progressive locales across the increasingly fruitless plain like to spend other people’s money with such abandon that they are always looking for new things to tax, like the rain. It happens to be raining where I am, and as I write this. It is unlike what they’ve seen … Read more

“Seniors Shouldn’t Pay Tax on Social Security”

Former President Donald Trump recently suggested repealing income tax on Social Security benefits.  Is it pandering, or is it an idea with merit? Trump wrote on Truth Social, “SENIORS SHOULD NOT PAY TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY!”  Whether you think paying income tax on Social Security is appropriate or not, what actually happens?  The government levies … Read more

What Tar and Feather Situation Have You Gotten Us Into?

If you are a rank-and-file Democrat in the Vermont House of Representatives – a soldier in the Supermajority – you are told by Party leadership how to vote. The majority leader will, in fact, hold up a paper sign, Yes or No, informing you how to cast your ballot on key issues. And you better … Read more

Donald Trump announces 2024 run

The Boldest Tax-Reform Proposal In A Century

Former President Donald Trump continues running the most issue-focused campaign our nation has ever seen. You would not know it if you followed only the mainstream media echo chambers, but the truth is that our 45th president has been rolling out a detailed and bold policy agenda for over a year. His recent focus has … Read more

debt-forgiveness-taxes

Who Will Save Us from Crippling Education Taxes? Not This Crowd!

The Democrat/Progressive supermajorities that voted to override Governor Scott’s vetoes of laws that resulted in the massive property tax bills most Vermonters are receiving this month are now spinning the line that they did the responsible – nay courageous — thing by kicking the can down the road and appointing yet another panel of (mostly) … Read more

Granite State Taxpayers, What a Misnomer!

Like many other groups that want you to think that they have the best interest of your liberty and your wallet at heart, Granite State Taxpayers (GST) releases a scorecard, and the 2024 report is in!  Of the 67 reps they’re honoring with so-called “perfect scores,” 25 of them voted for the RTK tax(HB 1002). … Read more

Cartoon hit with taxes

No, a 14% Property Tax Increase is Not a Decrease.

If you thought the biggest, most brazen political lie from this past week was “Joe Biden is sharp as a tack,” you would be wrong. That prize has to go to Vermont state Representative Mike Mrowicki (D-Putney), who said in an op-ed that he and the Democrat/Progressive supermajority “…lowered property tax rates — with a yield bill that’s fiscally responsible.”

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