Corporate taxes did NOT drive Harley out of Pennsylvania
When anything bad happens to a Wisconsin company, the anti-tax/anti-government crowd are sure to blame combined reporting.
But Harley-Davidson’s apparent decision to keep open its York, Pa., factory shows the fallacy in their blame game.
Combined reporting is the corporate tax reform enacted in Wisconsin earlier this year. It closes a great number of loopholes that allowed large firms to avoid paying state income tax.
After combined reporting became law, cynics said it would destroy business here.
Wisconsin taxes the richest less than the middle class and poor
Wisconsin’s richest pay less than 7% of their income for state and local taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom 80% pay 10% or more. Thanks to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy for their new model showing who actually taxes. See this summary from the Wisconsin Budget Project and the full report from ITEP.
Tax Foundation, foe of progressive taxes, responds to our criticism
The Tax Foundation, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank that is a major force for conservative tax policies, has released a statement calling our criticisms of its State Business Tax Climate a “witches’ brew of bad tax policies.”
The Institute for Wisconsin’s Future had earlier released a short report, The Tax Foundation’s Proposals Are Lose/Lose for Wisconsin. This paper called the Tax Foundation’s state tax climate ratings ” ideology masquerading as statistics.” It showed how a state could boost its tax rankings by such poor policies as putting a sales tax on groceries and gasoline and creating a deduction-free flat-tax system, the hallmark of a regressive tax system.
Are bake sales next for funding police?
You’ve seen the old bumper sticker that reads: “It’ll be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to have a bake sale to buy a bomber.”
Unfortunately, the Bayside, Wisconsin police have gone to selling raffle tickets in order to buy a new surveillance camera system.
The village board thought the camera system was a good idea, but didn’t have the $34,000 to buy it. So Police Chief Bruce Resnik went with a raffle to raise the money.
“Volunteer fire departments do it all the time,” Resnick said of raffles. “I can’t honestly say I’ve heard of a police department doing a raffle.”
