It’s More Than Just The Tax Thing
By: Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President
With the 2009 Nevada Legislature now past the mile post of deciding how much money to add back into the budget, attention turns to the tax combinations which will result in the necessary revenue to pay for the spending amounts they’ve settled on.
Using stimulus funding from our benevolent federal government and adding in dollars that are stolen from local government tax sources, the actual amount for the Nevada Legislature to put into a tax bill probably will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 million.
One of the most commonly held ideas is that a significant portion of this tax bill will come in the form of increases to the employee payroll tax, currently at 0.63 percent for those businesses which aren’t banks. During the last tax increase binge in Carson City, the banks were the ones with the bulls-eye on their wallets and they get to pay 2 percent of their payroll in this form of tax.
From what we can see here the masters of divide and conquer are using the same game plan of spinning things to a small-vs-“big” approach. Using the “Obama” dividing point of $250,000 (which is now the official mark of who’s going to be required to give it up) – those companies with payrolls below the mark will get “a cut” of a whopping 0.13 (bringing the new level to a much more reasonable level of 0.50 percent of payroll). The mid-sized operations with probably more than five employees and soaring payroll amounts over $250,000 will get to pay 2 percent of that payroll in as their civic responsibility to cover the costs the legislature felt appropriate to maintain the state government’s spending ways.
A Reform Package Of Responsibility Is What We Need:
The just say “No” to taxes theme is not a campaign which will result in anything more than a temporary “mad as heck” group of people who will get over it and probably end up electing the same type of representatives to send to Carson City in 2011 -- (Which promises to be a really exciting time, given the fact that the state budget for legislators to increase then will not have stimulus dollars to play with in propping up plummeting state revenue streams).
Between now and the next time the legislators come together for a regular session (we’ll likely have a few special sessions before that time to respond to more fiscal crisis situations) the seeds of responsible government need to be seeded and nurtured.
Reforming the current approach of believing that the current rate of government spending needs to be automatically increased, Nevada citizens need to demand that they get their money’s worth for what is being spent.
“Accountability” needs to be more than just a word that sounds nice, but lacks any demonstrated measurements that show us we’re getting what has been promised.
“Transparency” could also use some work, perhaps going as far as putting real proposals on the table for true exchange and dialogue instead of the system our legislators use now of working out the details behind closed doors and then bringing it out for the slam-dunk of the agreed upon vote.
Without the foundation of responsible government being installed, we’re going to keep getting what we’ve been getting – expanding and more expensive state government.
With the 2009 Nevada Legislature now past the mile post of deciding how much money to add back into the budget, attention turns to the tax combinations which will result in the necessary revenue to pay for the spending amounts they’ve settled on.
Using stimulus funding from our benevolent federal government and adding in dollars that are stolen from local government tax sources, the actual amount for the Nevada Legislature to put into a tax bill probably will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 million.
One of the most commonly held ideas is that a significant portion of this tax bill will come in the form of increases to the employee payroll tax, currently at 0.63 percent for those businesses which aren’t banks. During the last tax increase binge in Carson City, the banks were the ones with the bulls-eye on their wallets and they get to pay 2 percent of their payroll in this form of tax.
From what we can see here the masters of divide and conquer are using the same game plan of spinning things to a small-vs-“big” approach. Using the “Obama” dividing point of $250,000 (which is now the official mark of who’s going to be required to give it up) – those companies with payrolls below the mark will get “a cut” of a whopping 0.13 (bringing the new level to a much more reasonable level of 0.50 percent of payroll). The mid-sized operations with probably more than five employees and soaring payroll amounts over $250,000 will get to pay 2 percent of that payroll in as their civic responsibility to cover the costs the legislature felt appropriate to maintain the state government’s spending ways.
A Reform Package Of Responsibility Is What We Need:
The just say “No” to taxes theme is not a campaign which will result in anything more than a temporary “mad as heck” group of people who will get over it and probably end up electing the same type of representatives to send to Carson City in 2011 -- (Which promises to be a really exciting time, given the fact that the state budget for legislators to increase then will not have stimulus dollars to play with in propping up plummeting state revenue streams).
Between now and the next time the legislators come together for a regular session (we’ll likely have a few special sessions before that time to respond to more fiscal crisis situations) the seeds of responsible government need to be seeded and nurtured.
Reforming the current approach of believing that the current rate of government spending needs to be automatically increased, Nevada citizens need to demand that they get their money’s worth for what is being spent.
“Accountability” needs to be more than just a word that sounds nice, but lacks any demonstrated measurements that show us we’re getting what has been promised.
“Transparency” could also use some work, perhaps going as far as putting real proposals on the table for true exchange and dialogue instead of the system our legislators use now of working out the details behind closed doors and then bringing it out for the slam-dunk of the agreed upon vote.
Without the foundation of responsible government being installed, we’re going to keep getting what we’ve been getting – expanding and more expensive state government.
Posted by Doug Busselman at 5/14/2009 7:08 AM 
Categories: Nevada Legislature
Tags: Nevada Taxes Government Spending State Budget
Categories: Nevada Legislature
Tags: Nevada Taxes Government Spending State Budget
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