God, hes left as on aur oun.
Sweet Home Alabama.
Today’s the referendum on Governor Riley’s ambitious plan to restructure Alabama’s state tax plan. Here’s how the New York Times summed up the situation a few months ago:
Alabama’s tax system has long been brutally weighted against the least fortunate. The state income tax kicks in for families that earn as little a $4,600, when even Mississippi starts at over $19,000. Alabama also relies heavily on its sales tax, which runs as high as 11 percent and applies even to groceries and infant formula. The upshot is wildly regressive: Alabamians with incomes under $13,000 pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes, while those who make over $229,000 pay just 4.1 percent.
A main reason Alabama’s poor pay so much is that large timber companies and megafarms pay so little. The state allows big landowners to value their land using “current use” rules, which significantly lowball its worth. Individuals are allowed to fully deduct the federal income taxes they pay from their state taxes, something few states allow, a boon for those in the top brackets.
Governor Riley’s plan, which would bring in $1.2 billion in desperately needed revenue, takes aim at these inequalities. It would raise the income threshold at which families of four start paying taxes to more than $17,000. It would scrap the federal income tax deduction and increase exemptions for dependent children. And it would sharply roll back the current-use exemption, a change that could cost companies like Weyerhaeuser and Boise Cascade, which own hundreds of thousands of acres, millions in taxes. Governor Riley says that money is too tight to lift the sales tax on groceries this time, but that he intends to work for that later.
Things don’t look good. Despite the desperately needed restructuring of the inhumane tax burden on the poor, and despite the dire straits of Alabama’s public school system, and despite the heroic efforts of conservative Christians compelled to do what Jesus would do, the plan is being sold as nothing more than a tax increase—and that just won’t do in Grover Norquist’s bathtub. And lower-income voters, black and white, reeling and punch-drunk from decades of broken promises and fire-sale government, just don’t trust the state when it genuinely tries to hold out a helping hand: polls show 38% of Alabamians making $80,000 or more favor the restruction, but only 21% of those making less than $20,000 a year. (Remember: in Alabama, you pay income tax on an annual income as low as $4,600.) —Alabama’s new polling regulations will doubtless add to the anxiety and consternation.
The Right Christians will be covering the vote all day today. (A Minority of One, sadly, closed its doors.) In the meanwhile, read this American Prospect piece (thanks, Making Light); management humbly offers up these previous posts, with some links that are worth your while.
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You know what just kills me about this? I read about it really early on, and I've only just figured out looking at the recent Times story about it that not only do the people of Alabama who make between $5k and whatever the sum is that triggers federal tax pay state income taxes, the deduction for federal income tax means that they are only people in Alabama who _do_ pay state income taxes. Everyone who pays the federal tax can write it off against their state taxes and not pay.
Now, I cheerfully admit that my brain is on half-mast these days what with school starting and all, but why did I have to work that out for myself? Why the hell aren't they pointing it out to people?