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Title: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 13, 2011, 06:31:25 PM Since we have just created his body, I think it's only proper that a thread be created for it. The Emperor & Imperial Speaker shall be co-chairs, but any elected regional official may take a seat (up to five total). Furthermore, any citizen of the region is welcome to aid in the process.
The purpose of this committee is to ascertain the region's current tax rates & expenditures, so as to formulate a budget for the region. At the beginning of the next legislative session in late March, we will have to decide on whether or not to keep this as a permanent entity in the regional government. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 13, 2011, 06:47:17 PM Thank you, Emperor PiT, for setting this up. I want to apologize for my absence; I haven't had time for much else than a few posts in the 2012 forum this week. I don't have much to report on the budget as of yet.
As the first action of this body, I propose that each co-chair present his findings in this thread one day out of every week, effective this week. This way, the committee won't slip our minds quite as easily. To the citizens of the IDS: Please Help! This is a big task; we need all the help we can get. If you remember reading somewhere about something related to the South/Southeast/Dirty South/Imperial Dominion of the South's budget, please let us know. With that said, may the fun begin! Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 13, 2011, 06:54:56 PM I am fine with that proposal. Actually, I think I might make one post at the beginning of each week & edit it to include any new findings as the week progresses. That should be a good way to keep my thoughts organized.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 13, 2011, 06:56:37 PM I am fine with that proposal. Actually, I think I might make one post at the beginning of each week & edit it to include any new findings as the week progresses. That should be a good way to keep my thoughts organized. I was looking through wiki and, unless I read it wrong, the only laws cataloged are initiatives. I realize this is probably outside the scope of this committee but, if that's correct, something must be done to update it. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 13, 2011, 06:59:26 PM I am fine with that proposal. Actually, I think I might make one post at the beginning of each week & edit it to include any new findings as the week progresses. That should be a good way to keep my thoughts organized. I was looking through wiki and, unless I read it wrong, the only laws cataloged are initiatives. I realize this is probably outside the scope of this committee but, if that's correct, something must be done to update it. Indeed, not a single law has been catalogued since the creation of the Legislature. I have a lot to do this weekend, but I'll try to get at least a couple of laws up on the Wiki. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 13, 2011, 07:06:49 PM I am fine with that proposal. Actually, I think I might make one post at the beginning of each week & edit it to include any new findings as the week progresses. That should be a good way to keep my thoughts organized. I was looking through wiki and, unless I read it wrong, the only laws cataloged are initiatives. I realize this is probably outside the scope of this committee but, if that's correct, something must be done to update it. Indeed, not a single law has been catalogued since the creation of the Legislature. I have a lot to do this weekend, but I'll try to get at least a couple of laws up on the Wiki. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on February 13, 2011, 07:31:52 PM Interesting endeavour.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 13, 2011, 07:58:16 PM I am fine with that proposal. Actually, I think I might make one post at the beginning of each week & edit it to include any new findings as the week progresses. That should be a good way to keep my thoughts organized. I was looking through wiki and, unless I read it wrong, the only laws cataloged are initiatives. I realize this is probably outside the scope of this committee but, if that's correct, something must be done to update it. Indeed, not a single law has been catalogued since the creation of the Legislature. I have a lot to do this weekend, but I'll try to get at least a couple of laws up on the Wiki. Prior to the creation of the Imperial Legislature, except for a universal legislature that briefly existed in 2006, all laws were passed by referendum. You should be able to find all of the old voting booths looking on the Voting Booth board. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on February 14, 2011, 12:59:26 PM Heartily endorsed! This is something I hope all regions will undertake in some form in the foreseeable future.
Please let me know how the GM's Office can be of assistance. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 14, 2011, 05:23:52 PM Heartily endorsed! This is something I hope all regions will undertake in some form in the foreseeable future. Please let me know how the GM's Office can be of assistance. Thank you. If you happen to be looking through any old papers in your office that have (one of the south's many) names on it and a $ figure next to the name, please let us know. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 14, 2011, 05:25:51 PM Cataloging the Legislature My first step will be to catalog every spending bill passed by the Southeast/IDS legislature. I'll edit this post. PiT, if you would do the same for the initiatives I would be very grateful. * * * Imperial Dominion of the South's Legislature Quote Our law code, unless modified by initiative, is by default that of Georgia c. 2006. The following was passed by the RL Georgian legislature in April of 2006, meaning it would be in statute for the Southeast Region. -page 13; April 18, 2010Quote Put the "free" back in Free Enterprise Bill -page 17; May 11, 2010*1. All non-federal business regulations in the Southeast are hereby repealed. 2. From July 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010 all taxes on corporate income shall be set to 10%. Starting January 1, 2011, the rate at which corporations are taxed shall be set at 8.6% 3. All new businesses in the SE shall not have their income taxed within the first year of starting. In addition, all new businesses in the SE shall have an income tax rate of 5% in their second year of establishment. Quote Southeastern Educational Incentive Act page 33; July 23, 2010*1. The Southeast shall provide a $1,000 tax credit per student, indexed to the Atlasian rate of inflation of currency, to all households who have a member enrolled in an institute of higher learning full-time, and a $500 tax credit, indexed to the Atlasian rate of inflation of currency, to a member enrolled part-time. An institute of higher learning shall be defined as any accredited trade school, community college, four-year college, or university. 2. The credit provided shall not exceed the total value of the income tax assessed. (i.e. taxation cannot be less than $0) 3. A full-time student shall be deemed any student who successfully completes a total of 24 credit hours per year, or completes 12 credit hours per semester. 4. A part-time student shall be deemed any student who successfully completes at least 6, but no more than 23 credit hours per year, or who completes at least 3, but no more than 11, credit hours per semester. 5. This law shall take effect starting for students enrolled within institutes of higher learning during the semester starting in the Fall of 2010. 6. In order to be eligible for the credit, households must be based within the Southeast, though students may study elsewhere. 7. In addition, this credit shall only apply to those households whose annual income after charitable and other deductions is $250,000 or below. This value also shall be indexed to the Atlasian rate of inflation of currency. Quote Pentagram Creation Act -page 44; September 23, 2010*1. A giant structure is to be built in the shape of a Pentagram. a. The interior of the Pentagram is to be an intricate maze. b. The walls are to be several stories high and made of black marble. 2. The construction of said Pentagram shall be contracted out to a regional construction company. 3. The Pentagram should, upon completion, be designated a tourist attraction. 4. The Pentagram shall be built in the city of Memphis, TN, outside the southern border of the Capital Complex, facing the Capitol Building. 5. 80% of revenues from ticket sales for admission to the Pentagram shall go into the Treasury of the Imperial Dominion of the South. The remaining 20% shall go to the contractors responsible for the construction of the Pentagram. a. Up to half of that shall be withdrawn by the government of the Imperial Dominion of the South, until that amount withdrawn is equal to the amount that the government of the Imperial Dominion of the South's contractual expenditures in the construction of the Pentagram. Quote Looks like the President has designated $750M to the DS for now. He hasn't allocated the full $15 billion for 2010 yet. Anyway, unless I continue with the bill to override, that's what we have for now. We did get the most of all the regions. -page 58; November 28, 2010NOTE: This is the Highway Fund from the federal government (I think) Quote Duke Greenway Road Creation Act -page 59' November 20, 20101. This act creates a state road running along the path specified. 2. This road shall be named Duke Greenway 3. Construction of the Duke Greenway shall be paid for with $140 million dollars taken from the Highway Fund. 4. The map below is the specified path. Quote Road Creation Act- Blanche Lincoln Boulevard- Monticello, Ark. -page 60; December 1, 20101. This act creates a new segment of Arkansas State Highway 35, with four lanes total, a divided highway running along the path specified, with new oak trees planted in the center median (local government will decide how many, and how far apart they shall be spaced), with at-grade intersections. 2. This divided highway shall be named Blanche Lincoln Boulevard. 3. The map below is the specified path. 4. This bill appropriates $100,000,000 for the completion of this project 2010 Federal Stimulus Act (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/2010_Federal_Stimulus_Act) -page 61 (old copy); December 3, 2010 Quote $5,000,000,000 total -page 61; December 5, 2010highest priority is infrastructure lowest priority is sewer & water treatment filtration NOTE: This somehow ties in with the 2010 Federal Stimulus Act (How?) Quote III Act -page 68; December 30, 2010Improving Imperial Infrastructure 1. The regional government of the Imperial Dominion of the South hereby allocates $300 million to the states for infrastructure projects. 2. The funds will be allocated to the states in the following manner. Alabama: $15,500,000 Arkansas: $9,200,000 Florida: $60,600,000 Georgia: $31,100,000 Louisiana: $14,900,000 Mississippi: $9,600,000 North Carolina: $30,400,000 Puerto Rico: $12,400,000 South Carolina: $14,900,000 Tennessee: $20,400,000 Texas: $81,000,000 3. Infrastructure projects shall be defined as any of the constructs in the following categories. ---Transportation Infrastructure Road, highway, and railway networks including relevant structures such as bridges, tunnels, culverts, retaining walls, signs and communications systems, electrical systems, edge treatments, road maintenance depots, rest areas, and terminal facilities Canals and navigable waterways requiring continuous maintenance Seaports and lighthouses Airports and air navigational systems Mass transit systems Pedestrian walkways and bicycle paths Ferries ---Energy Infrastructure Electrical Power Networks including generating plants, electric grid, substations, and local distribution Natural gas and Petroleum pipelines, storage, and distribution terminals Coal mines and specialized facilities for washing, storing, and transporting coal Steam and hot water production for district heating systems ---Water Management Infrastructure Drinking water supply systems Sewage collection and waste water disposal Drainage systems Major irrigation systems (reservoirs, irrigation canals) Major flood control systems (dikes, levees, major pumping stations and floodgates) ---Communications Infrastructure Postal service, including sorting faculties Telephone networks (land lines) including switching systems Mobile phone networks Television and radio transmission stations, including the regulations and standards governing broadcasting Cable television physical networks including receiving stations and cable distribution networks. (Does not include content providers or "networks" when used in the sense of a specialized channel such as CNN or MTV) ---Solid Waste Management Municipal garbage and recyclables collection; Solid waste landfills Solid waste incinerators and plasma gasification facilities Materials recovery facilities Hazardous waste disposal facilities NOTE: With the passage of this bill, $300 million is left from money allocated by the Federal Government for infrastructure projects Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 14, 2011, 05:53:28 PM Alright, I'll look through the initiatives later today. I plan on getting a bunch of bills up tonight, so looking for any taxation provisions in the initiatives shouldn't be a problem.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 14, 2011, 06:59:41 PM My first post exceeded the 11,000 character limit so below is the rest of it. So that's everything money-related in the Legislative thread. I did notice some bills without any monetary specifications but budgetary implications (just about everything that doesn't have to do with the rules, function and names of government). Do I need to go back and log all of that so it can be taken into account when we create the budget or can we just use Georgia law in these grey areas. Also, when it comes to our baseline tax revenue, should it be based off the actual total population of the United States southeast or should be use a mathematical equation based on our in-game population to arrive at that total?
Quote Regional Stimulus Distribution Bill -page 73; January 20, 2011This bill shall be passed into law concerning the funds disbursed to the Imperial Dominion of the South pursuant to Section 2, Subsection e of the 2010 Federal Stimulus Act. All Clause numbers given in this bill shall refer to the Clauses passed into law under the aforementioned Act, Section, and Subsection. 1. From Clause 1 of the bill, a. $1,000,000,000 shall be distributed to the states of the region for the purposes outlined by the Clause in question, in the same ratios as prescribed by Section 2 of the III Act. b. From Clause 1 of the bill, $4,000,000,000 shall be distributed to the regional Department of Transportation, to be dedicated to the construction, retrofitting, & maintenance of interstate bridges and highways. 2. From Clause 2 of the bill, $3,000,000,000 shall be distributed to the states of the region for the purposes outlined by the clause in question, in the same ratios as prescribed by Section 2 of the III Act. 3. From Clause 3 of the bill, $2,000,000,000 shall be distributed to the states of the region for the purposes outlined by the clause in question, in the same ratios as prescribed by Section 2 of the III Act. 4. From Clause 4, Sub-Clause A of the bill, a. $10,000,000 shall be devoted to the renovation of the Regional Buildings throughout the region. b. $990,000,000 shall be disbursed to the regional Department of Labor for the establishment of a regional worker retraining program that will make use of the space renovated pursuant to Section 4a of this bill. c. $2,000,000,000 shall be disbursed to the states of the region for the purposes outlined in the clause and sub-clause in question in the following manner: Alabama: $93,000,000 Arkansas: $49,700,000 Florida: $487,700,000 Georgia: $211,300,000 Louisiana: $80,300,000 Mississippi: $63,400,000 North Carolina: $199,500,000 Puerto Rico: $134,800,000 South Carolina: $105,900,000 Tennessee: $128,900,000 Texas: $445,500,000 5. From Clause 4, Sub-Clause B of the bill, $2,000,000,000 shall be disbursed to the regional Department of Education to be used in conjunction with the Southeastern Educational Incentive Act. a. An additional tax credit shall be addended and made disbursed to all students who qualify for a tax credit under the Southeastern Educational Incentive Act. b. The value of this tax credit shall equal 50% of the value of the tax credit that the students in question are entitled to under the Southeastern Educational Incentive Act and be disbursed to students in order of increasing annual income after charitable and other deductions. c. Once the funds supplied by the relevant clause and sub-clause of the bill have been depleted, the continued disbursement of this tax credit shall be terminated immediately. NOTE: I'm feeling quite stimulated ;) Atlasia Dispatch-Herald Quote Regional Budgets Released -page 16; April 29, 2010Southeast: This region has revenue of $632 billion and expenses of $630 billion, resulting in a surplus of $2 billion. The surplus is mostly a result of increased taxation, in addition to crisis funds from the federal government. The Southeast has also had success curbing lavish expenditures that had been typical of the region before the creation of the Southeast Legislature. It is recommended that surplus revenue be used predominantly to help the continued troubled industries in the Southeast through a combination of tax cuts/credits and subsidies. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 15, 2011, 03:26:02 AM Section 6 of the Southeast Lottery Regulations, adopted on November 5, 2004, as amended by the Expanding Choice Initiative, passed on July 18, 2005:
Quote A Lottery General Fund shall be established. This Fund shall receive monies from the operation of the games run by Lottery Commission as described above. It shall be used to pay the expenses of administering the games, including promotional expenses. No more than 8% of the monies entered into the Lottery General Fund in any fiscal year may be used for administrative expenses. At the end of each fiscal quarter, 92% of the monies in the Lottery General Fund shall be transferred to the Lottery Education Fund. Sections 3-6 of the Excise Tax Administration Initiative, passed on January 24, 2005: Quote Section 3 - Licensing When an initiative providing for an excise tax calls for certain classes of persons to be licensed: (1) A licensee must not be convicted of a felony for any crime or of a misdemanor involving the deliberate evasion of taxes. (2) The collecting authority may charge a fee for the license which shall not exceed 125% of the costs directly attributable to the issuance of said licenses. (3) Acting in a capacity that requires a license without obtaining said license shall: (A) if acting in such capacity did not require the person to collect or remit excise taxes under that law, be a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of no more than $1,000 per month the person acted in such capacity, or (B) if acting is such capacity as required the person to collect or remit excise taxes under that law, be a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of no more than $10,000, 30 days imprisonment, or both per month the person acted in such capacity. (4) A person guilty of a misdemeanor under paragraph (3) shall have the punishment trebled if it is determined in a court of law that he was aware that: (A) such capacity required such a license, and (B) that he was ineligible for such license because of paragraph (1). Section 4 - Failure to Remit Tax (a). Failure to remit less than $10,000 of required excise tax in a calendar year shall be a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of no more than the greater of $1,000 or five times the excise tax that should have been paid, six months impisonment, or both. (b). Failure to remit $10,000 or more, but less than $50,000 of required excise tax in a calendar year shall be a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of no more than five times the excise tax that should have been paid, twelve months impisonment, or both. (c). Failure to remit $50,000 or more, but less than $250,000 of required excise tax in a calendar year shall be a felony punishable by a fine of no more than five times the excise tax that should have been paid, twenty five months impisonment, or both. (d). Failure to remit $250,000 or more, but less than $1,000,000 of required excise tax in a calendar year shall be a felony punishable by a fine of no more than five times the excise tax that should have been paid, five years impisonment, or both. (e). Failure to remit $1,000,000 or more of required excise tax in a calendar year shall be a felony punishable by a fine of no more than five times the excise tax that should have been paid, ten years impisonment, or both. Section 5 - State Excise Taxes (a). Once a Regional excise tax is in effect, States may assess excise taxes on such products of no more than one-quarter of the tax assessed under said excise tax. (1) States may delegate such taxing authority to a subdivision thereof. (2) The authority collecting an excise tax for the Southeast Region shall collect the excise tax for a State that imposes an excise tax on all such goods sold within said State that are taxed under a particular initiative is in uniform proportion to the Regional excise taxed assessed under said initiative and remit the same at no cost to the State. (3) The collecting authority may collect the excise tax for a State which either varies according to the locale of sale or varies according to the variety of assessed good in a manner not proportional to the rates assessed by the initiative, but only on a basis which recovers all costs to the collecting authority of collecting said tax for the State or subdivision thereof. (b). The limitation on excise tax assessed by the States established by Subsection (a) shall not preclude the assessment of non-excise taxes on the goods, such as sales tax or inventory tax that the State (or a subdivision thereof) assesses on general goods so long as no more than 15% of the revenues obtained by such assessment are derived from the assessment of the goods subject to a particular Regional excise tax. (1) If more than 15% of such revenues are so obtained that the State (or subdivision thereof) shall remit to the general fund of the Southeast Region a portion of such revenues so that no more than 15% of the revenues retained by the State (or subdivision thereof) from said tax are so obtained. Section 6 - Expenditures (a). The collecting authority may spend no more than 5% of the excise tax collected for the Southeast Region by the collecting authority on its own administrative costs, exclusive of enforcement. (b). The collecting authority may spend no more than 10% of the excise tax collected for the Southeast Region by the collecting authority on activities to enforce the collection of those taxes. (c). The collecting authority shall allocate a minimum of 5% of the excise tax collected for the Southeast Region by the collecting authority to an educational fund. (d). The collecting authority shall allocate 5% of the excise tax collected for the Southeast Region by the collecting authority into a reserve fund. (1). At the end of each fiscal year the amount of the reserve fund in excess of three times the adminstrative expenses of the collecting authority shall be transferred to the general fund of the Southeast Region. (2). The reserve shall be available to the collecting authority only to meet: (A) administrative expenses if a decrease in taxes collected from the prior year caused the funds available for adminstrative costs under Subsection (a) to be less than expected and (B) the costs of defending the collecting authority of civil suits claiming improper collection of the excise tax it collects by the commission or an employee thereof and to pay adverse judgements in such cases. (e). The collecting authority shall allocate all funds not obligated under the preceeding subsections, which shall be a minimum of 75% of the excise tax collected for the Southeast Region by the collecting authority, into the program fund for that excise tax. Not sure yet what relevance this has, if any, since I am not aware of any excises with program funds passed in the region. I guess I will find out soon, though. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 15, 2011, 03:31:15 AM Also, when it comes to our baseline tax revenue, should it be based off the actual total population of the United States southeast or should be use a mathematical equation based on our in-game population to arrive at that total? For the stimulus bills, I came up with apportionment figures for the states based on the assumption that their populations were the same as in real life. As such, for the sake of consistency, I think we should use the actual populations of these states. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 15, 2011, 05:51:02 PM Also, when it comes to our baseline tax revenue, should it be based off the actual total population of the United States southeast or should be use a mathematical equation based on our in-game population to arrive at that total? For the stimulus bills, I came up with apportionment figures for the states based on the assumption that their populations were the same as in real life. As such, for the sake of consistency, I think we should use the actual populations of these states. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 15, 2011, 06:00:27 PM Also, when it comes to our baseline tax revenue, should it be based off the actual total population of the United States southeast or should be use a mathematical equation based on our in-game population to arrive at that total? For the stimulus bills, I came up with apportionment figures for the states based on the assumption that their populations were the same as in real life. As such, for the sake of consistency, I think we should use the actual populations of these states. I do agree that maintaining a regional budget would be a good idea, though I don't like the original initiative. Rather than repealing its repeal, I'd suggest an altogether new bill in its vein. We don't have a statute-as-amended, recall. :P Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on February 15, 2011, 06:34:05 PM Let me offer some general ideas for a framework based on what the Mideast has done. I emphasize "general" and "framework" as the IDS will characteristically do its own thing. ;)
Check out the links in the following posts in the budget thread: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2756417#msg2756417 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2769048#msg2769048 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2774577#msg2774577 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2789445#msg2789445 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2789731#msg2789731 The benefit here is it allows comparison to real life for several broad spending and taxing catagories. The structure makes it relatively simple to assess the results of taxing and spending decisions based on RL comparison. The actual taxing and spending levels within that framework are 100% your own. Thoughts? Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 15, 2011, 09:14:52 PM Let me offer some general ideas for a framework based on what the Mideast has done. I emphasize "general" and "framework" as the IDS will characteristically do its own thing. ;) Check out the links in the following posts in the budget thread: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2756417#msg2756417 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2769048#msg2769048 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2774577#msg2774577 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2789445#msg2789445 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2789731#msg2789731 The benefit here is it allows comparison to real life for several broad spending and taxing catagories. The structure makes it relatively simple to assess the results of taxing and spending decisions based on RL comparison. The actual taxing and spending levels within that framework are 100% your own. Thoughts? That's a lot. A very good suggestion but it will take some work. Looking down that list, I noticed categories that the SE has never past spending bills related to. Should we assume that we were spending in these categories during the past few years or not? If we don't, we will have an unrealistically large surplus without any of the negatives associated with not spending any money in some of the categories. However, that seems like a bit of a realism killer. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 16, 2011, 04:22:39 AM Southeast Alcohol Initiative, Section 8, as passed on February 21, 2005:
Quote Section 8 - Taxes (a). Alcoholic beverages sold in the Southeast Region after January 1, 2006 shall be subject to an excise tax levied by the Southeast Region of $1.00 per proof liter. (b). Not withstanding any other provision of law, States (or a political subdivision thereof if the State chooses to delegate this authority) may assess a tax of no greater than $1.00 per alcoholic drink sold. Southeast Tobacco Initiative, Section 6, as passed on February 21, 2005: Quote Section 6 - Taxes (a). Cigarettes sold in the Southeast Region after January 1, 2006 shall be subject to an excise tax of 4 cents per cigarette. (b). Cigars sold in the Southeast Region after January 1, 2006 shall be subject to an excise tax of 8 cents per cigar. (c). Packaged loose tobacco sold in the Southeast Region after January 1, 2006 shall be subject to an excise tax of $2.00 per kilogram. Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4, as passed on February 21, 2005: Quote Chapter 4 - Taxation Section 31 - Excise and Sales Taxes Excise and sales taxes imposed by the Southeast Region or any of its subsidiary governments on electrical power produced by an approved nuclear plant shall be 80% of what they otherwise would be under law. Section 32 - Income Taxes A deduction of 10% of the gross income from the sale of electrical power produced by an approved nuclear plant shall be made to determine the net income of the producer for the purposes of income taxes imposed by the Southeast Region or any of its subsidiary governments. Section 33 - Property Taxes For purposes of taxation only, the assessed valuation of an approved nuclear plant shall be no greater than $50,000 per megawatt of generating capacity. Southeast Biomass Initiative, Section 3, as passed on February 21, 2005: Quote Section 3 - Excise taxes Excise and sales taxes imposed by the Southeast Region or any of its subsidiary governments on electrical power produced by the combustion of biomass shall be 80% of what they otherwise would be under law. In the case of power generated by co-firing with non-biomass fuels, the tax rate shall be prorated according to the portion of energy derived from the use of biomass. Transportation Commission Initiative, Chapter 2, Sections 14 & 15, & Chapter 3, Section 22, as passed on March 21, 2005: Quote Section 14 - Highway Education Fund 1. There shall be established in the Southeast treasury a “Highway Education Fund”. 2. The Commission shall use this fund to: (a) establish and fund programs for driver education, and (b) encourage safe vehicle operation. 3. This fund shall receive the funds allocated to the education fund defined in Section 2, Clause 2 of the Excise Tax Administration Initiative (9). Section 15 - Highway Operation Fund 1. There shall be established in the Southeast treasury a “Highway Operation Fund”. 2. The Commission shall use this fund to: (a) build and maintain the highways and byways of the Southeastern Region, (b) to operate a highway patrol to enforce the traffic laws of the Southeastern Regions and its subdivisions, (c) to cooperate with railway companies to ensure that crossings between railways and highways are safe, (d) to provide supervisory and common contracting functions for publically owned passenger and cargo airports, and (e) to operate waterports and ferry systems. 3. This fund shall receive the funds allocated to the program fund defined in Section 2, Clause 3 of the Excise Tax Administration Initiative (9). Quote Section 22 - Excise Tax Liquid fuel sold in the Southeast Region after January 1, 2006 shall be subject to an excise tax by the Southeast Region of $0.08 per liter. Fair Consequences Initiative, Section 3, as passed on July 18, 2005: Quote Section 3: Fiscal Impact, Funding Funding for the Southeast Regional Sex Offender Database shall be provided by increasing the driver's license fee by one dollar. Any excess funds shall be placed into the general activities fund. Safe Roads Initiative, Section 6, as passed on July 18, 2005: Quote 6. The owner of the motor vehicle, upon registration, shall pay a one-time fee of five dollars for the license plates and for administration of the registration program. That covers the first 50 initiatives. Some of them imposed fines on various crimes or carried various unenumerated economic implications. I don't think any of them would have a substantial effect on the regional budget though, so I generally neglected them. Once we've completed the main project, it might be a good idea to go back & estimate the little details. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on February 16, 2011, 10:30:04 AM Let me offer some general ideas for a framework based on what the Mideast has done. I emphasize "general" and "framework" as the IDS will characteristically do its own thing. ;) Check out the links in the following posts in the budget thread: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2756417#msg2756417 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2769048#msg2769048 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2774577#msg2774577 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2789445#msg2789445 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2789731#msg2789731 The benefit here is it allows comparison to real life for several broad spending and taxing categories. The structure makes it relatively simple to assess the results of taxing and spending decisions based on RL comparison. The actual taxing and spending levels within that framework are 100% your own. Thoughts? That's a lot. A very good suggestion but it will take some work. Looking down that list, I noticed categories that the SE has never past spending bills related to. Should we assume that we were spending in these categories during the past few years or not? If we don't, we will have an unrealistically large surplus without any of the negatives associated with not spending any money in some of the categories. However, that seems like a bit of a realism killer. I would take it that you are spending whatever levels you determine you're spending, regardless of past legislation or lack thereof. In other words, treat this as "year one" for determining how much is being spent in these various categories. However faithful you want to be to prior legislation is up to you guys (and commendable), but don't let the fact the IDS (e.g.) never passed a budget for police and prisons (other than the free range one ;)) stop you all from deciding to appropriate 'X' Billion towards police and prisons. Unless you guys insist otherwise the GM is willing to give a mulligan on prior spending in this category. ;) That said, I will base the relative level of services provided through a comparison of real life expenditures to whatever you guys appropriate. In other words if RL expenditures for "protection" in the 10 states comprising the IDS are $10 Billion, but the IDS only appropriates $5 Billion, that means the IDS will have to prepare a plan for dealing with half the prisons, guards, parole officers, and state troopers the real world south deals with, and/or suffer whatever ramifications the GM determines would arise from such funding levels. With that in mind, PiT, I assure you with this economy the LAST thing you guys will have to deal with is "large surpluses". :( Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 16, 2011, 12:34:54 PM Let me offer some general ideas for a framework based on what the Mideast has done. I emphasize "general" and "framework" as the IDS will characteristically do its own thing. ;) Check out the links in the following posts in the budget thread: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2756417#msg2756417 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2769048#msg2769048 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2774577#msg2774577 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2789445#msg2789445 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2789731#msg2789731 The benefit here is it allows comparison to real life for several broad spending and taxing categories. The structure makes it relatively simple to assess the results of taxing and spending decisions based on RL comparison. The actual taxing and spending levels within that framework are 100% your own. Thoughts? That's a lot. A very good suggestion but it will take some work. Looking down that list, I noticed categories that the SE has never past spending bills related to. Should we assume that we were spending in these categories during the past few years or not? If we don't, we will have an unrealistically large surplus without any of the negatives associated with not spending any money in some of the categories. However, that seems like a bit of a realism killer. I would take it that you are spending whatever levels you determine you're spending, regardless of past legislation or lack thereof. In other words, treat this as "year one" for determining how much is being spent in these various categories. However faithful you want to be to prior legislation is up to you guys (and commendable), but don't let the fact the IDS (e.g.) never passed a budget for police and prisons (other than the free range one ;)) stop you all from deciding to appropriate 'X' Billion towards police and prisons. Unless you guys insist otherwise the GM is willing to give a mulligan on prior spending in this category. ;) That said, I will base the relative level of services provided through a comparison of real life expenditures to whatever you guys appropriate. In other words if RL expenditures for "protection" in the 10 states comprising the IDS are $10 Billion, but the IDS only appropriates $5 Billion, that means the IDS will have to prepare a plan for dealing with half the prisons, guards, parole officers, and state troopers the real world south deals with, and/or suffer whatever ramifications the GM determines would arise from such funding levels. With that in mind, PiT, I assure you with this economy the LAST thing you guys will have to deal with is "large surpluses". :( Now is not the greatest time to do the budget if you want to get a rosy picture of things, but it is still good to get it done. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on February 16, 2011, 12:52:28 PM Let me offer some general ideas for a framework based on what the Mideast has done. I emphasize "general" and "framework" as the IDS will characteristically do its own thing. ;) Check out the links in the following posts in the budget thread: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2756417#msg2756417 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2769048#msg2769048 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2774577#msg2774577 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2789445#msg2789445 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2789731#msg2789731 The benefit here is it allows comparison to real life for several broad spending and taxing categories. The structure makes it relatively simple to assess the results of taxing and spending decisions based on RL comparison. The actual taxing and spending levels within that framework are 100% your own. Thoughts? That's a lot. A very good suggestion but it will take some work. Looking down that list, I noticed categories that the SE has never past spending bills related to. Should we assume that we were spending in these categories during the past few years or not? If we don't, we will have an unrealistically large surplus without any of the negatives associated with not spending any money in some of the categories. However, that seems like a bit of a realism killer. I would take it that you are spending whatever levels you determine you're spending, regardless of past legislation or lack thereof. In other words, treat this as "year one" for determining how much is being spent in these various categories. However faithful you want to be to prior legislation is up to you guys (and commendable), but don't let the fact the IDS (e.g.) never passed a budget for police and prisons (other than the free range one ;)) stop you all from deciding to appropriate 'X' Billion towards police and prisons. Unless you guys insist otherwise the GM is willing to give a mulligan on prior spending in this category. ;) That said, I will base the relative level of services provided through a comparison of real life expenditures to whatever you guys appropriate. In other words if RL expenditures for "protection" in the 10 states comprising the IDS are $10 Billion, but the IDS only appropriates $5 Billion, that means the IDS will have to prepare a plan for dealing with half the prisons, guards, parole officers, and state troopers the real world south deals with, and/or suffer whatever ramifications the GM determines would arise from such funding levels. With that in mind, PiT, I assure you with this economy the LAST thing you guys will have to deal with is "large surpluses". :( Now is not the greatest time to do the budget if you want to get a rosy picture of things, but it is still good to get it done. Amen, brother. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 16, 2011, 05:01:41 PM Regional Revenues This is the IDS taxation history based on the information from my catalog and PiT's work. Remember, these are only state taxes; the citizens would also be paying federal taxes (would they be paying state taxes?). $2 Billion surplus as of April 29, 2010 Corporate Tax July 1-December 31, 2010: 10% January 1, 2011-present: 8.6% All businesses created after May 11, 2010 did not have to pay taxes for the remainder of 2010 and will only pay 5% for 2011; after December 31, 2011 they will pay the full 8.6%. Excise Taxes $1.00 per alcoholic beverage Nuclear and biomass power are 80% less than what it would be under law $0.08 per liter of liquid fuel $1.00 fee on driver licenses to pay for Sex Offender Database $5.00 fee for license plates; one-time only Sales Taxes Nuclear power is 10% less than what it would be under law (is there another law related to this?) Property Taxes Nuclear power plants pay $50,000 per megawatt generation capacity Tax Credits $1,000 to households with full-time student beginning in Fall 2010; only applies to households with income under $250,000 $500 to households with part-time student beginning in Fall 2010; only applies to households with income under $250,000 Miscellaneous 80% of ticket sales from Giant Pentagram Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 16, 2011, 05:07:57 PM Federal Charity Highway Fund $15 Billion total (Federal Money) $750 Million authorized to the IDS $140 Million for Duke Greenway $100 Million for Blanche-Lincoln Boulevard $510 Million authorized $14,760 Million total (Federal control) Stimulation Station $5 Billion for Infrastructure + Sewage and Water treatment/filtration + Power Grid updates and maintenance $3 Billion for Education $2 Billion for Coal to Liquid Plants $400 Million for Wind Power Plants $500 Million for Solar Power Plants $5 Billion allocated to the states for infrastructure $3 Billion spent on Education $2 Billion spent on Coal to Liquid Plants $990 Million spent on Worker Retraining Program $10 Million spent on Regional Building Renovation $2 Billion spent on Education (Clause 4, Sub-clause B is not a valid part of the 2010 Federal Stimulus Act $1 Billion for the construction of Coal to Liquid Plants Balanced- all money spent as allocated. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 16, 2011, 06:02:00 PM As of April 29, 2010, we had a $2 Billion dollar surplus. That means that, regardless of our actual spending levels before then, we ended up with a $2 Billion surplus. Badger, If we discover that this doesn't match up can you just use your handwave powers so that we can still have a $2 billion surplus.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on February 17, 2011, 08:44:45 AM As of April 29, 2010, we had a $2 Billion dollar surplus. That means that, regardless of our actual spending levels before then, we ended up with a $2 Billion surplus. Badger, If we discover that this doesn't match up can you just use your handwave powers so that we can still have a $2 billion surplus. It all depends. The economy tanking has had a real hit on tax revenues. It'll all come down to tax revenue and spending, but I doubt you'll have anywhere near that amount of surplus to begin with. Could you link the $2 Bil surplus estimate, please? Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 17, 2011, 09:27:25 AM As of April 29, 2010, we had a $2 Billion dollar surplus. That means that, regardless of our actual spending levels before then, we ended up with a $2 Billion surplus. Badger, If we discover that this doesn't match up can you just use your handwave powers so that we can still have a $2 billion surplus. It all depends. The economy tanking has had a real hit on tax revenues. It'll all come down to tax revenue and spending, but I doubt you'll have anywhere near that amount of surplus to begin with. Could you link the $2 Bil surplus estimate, please? And I meant that we had a surplus as of the time we were told we had a surplus. What we have now will be different, probably a lot less. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on February 18, 2011, 03:42:04 PM As of April 29, 2010, we had a $2 Billion dollar surplus. That means that, regardless of our actual spending levels before then, we ended up with a $2 Billion surplus. Badger, If we discover that this doesn't match up can you just use your handwave powers so that we can still have a $2 billion surplus. It all depends. The economy tanking has had a real hit on tax revenues. It'll all come down to tax revenue and spending, but I doubt you'll have anywhere near that amount of surplus to begin with. Could you link the $2 Bil surplus estimate, please? And I meant that we had a surplus as of the time we were told we had a surplus. What we have now will be different, probably a lot less. Gotcha, and thanks. Again, let me offer this piece of advice: To maintain consistency in budgeting its very important for the GM's Office and the IDS Region to be on the same page and using the same structure. For that reason I suggest using this website. (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/#usgs302a) If you pick a state in the IDS (Texas for example) and click on spending for 2011, the lower right hand corner will show the State's real life spending divided into 6 major categories (pensions, health care, education, etc). If you click on 2011 in that graph, it takes you to a slightly more detailed breakdown of spending with a couple additional spending categories ("general government", "interest", etc. see Texas here) (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year2010_TX.html#usgs302), and each of those spending categories can be expanded to various subcategories (e.g. Education subdivides into spending for pre-primary through secondary education, tertiary education, and education not definable by level; each of those subcategories can also be subdivided into sub-sub categories of spending for even more details on spending. The taxes link for each state offers similar breakdowns of tax revenues from various sources in different levels of breakdown, from general to detailed. Whether you guys want to use the most detailed breakdowns available with all the spending/taxing subcategories available, or if you want to just use the most basic breakdown of about half a general categories listed here, is totally up to you. Likewise, the actual spending and taxing levels are totally up to you gas well. However, propose using this website's basic structure to design your own regional budget. It allows me as GM to make ready comparisons to RL spending and tax revenues levels, and again keeps us all on the same page. Its been invaluable in getting the Mideast budget off the ground. But as always, its your game and your decision. Any thoughts or comments here? Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 18, 2011, 04:59:15 PM I am quite certain that Clause 4, Sub-clause B is a valid part of the 2010 Federal Stimulus Act. Did you make sure to check under Section 2, Sub-section e?
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 20, 2011, 02:48:19 AM Sections 6 & 7 of the Expanding Choice Initiative, as passed on July 18, 2005:
Quote 6. The Southeast shall also establish a Regional Education Tax to subsidize the Lottery Education Fund. This tax may only be collected to finance the Student Scholarships and all profits will be added directly to the Southeast Lottery Education Fund. 7. The amount of the Regional Education Tax shall be determined every fiscal year by dividing the monetary needs of the School System, minus the funds in the Lottery Education Fund, by each Resident of the Southeast. The School Choice Initiative, as passed on November 21, 2005: Quote Section 1 1. All direct regional funding to schools, either district, private or religious, shall be abolished. 2. State departments of education shall be abolished and merged into a Regional Department of Education. Section 2 1. The Southeast Region shall give the parents or legal guardians of a child a voucher, worth the values stated on Clause 3. Each child child will warrant a voucher. The voucher may only be spent to pay for tuition in ancredited schools. 2. There shall be no restrictions against charging tuition imposed on district schools. 3. The value for the vouchers will vary according to the following guidelines: Children aged 5 to 12: $4000 Children aged 12 to 18 --Household income from $0 to $30,000: $7,000 --Household income from $30,000 to $45,000: $5,000 --Household Income from $45,000 and above: $4,000 4. Values from Clause 3 shall be indexed to the CPI. 5. The difference between the voucher amount and the tuition value, when positive, shall be allowed to be kept by the child's parents or guardians. However, the remaining value can only be used to pay for school material or to be used next year for the same purposes. Sections 1 & 2 of the Public Assistance in Abortion Ban Initiative, as passed on November 21, 2005: Quote 1. No facility in the Southeast who performs abortion for any reason shall be permitted the use of public money. 2. No agency of the Southeast government shall be permitted to aid, in any way, in the procurement or preformance of an abortion. That's it for the first 100 initiatives. For some reason there were very few appropriations in this batch. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 21, 2011, 08:15:31 PM As of April 29, 2010, we had a $2 Billion dollar surplus. That means that, regardless of our actual spending levels before then, we ended up with a $2 Billion surplus. Badger, If we discover that this doesn't match up can you just use your handwave powers so that we can still have a $2 billion surplus. It all depends. The economy tanking has had a real hit on tax revenues. It'll all come down to tax revenue and spending, but I doubt you'll have anywhere near that amount of surplus to begin with. Could you link the $2 Bil surplus estimate, please? And I meant that we had a surplus as of the time we were told we had a surplus. What we have now will be different, probably a lot less. Gotcha, and thanks. Again, let me offer this piece of advice: To maintain consistency in budgeting its very important for the GM's Office and the IDS Region to be on the same page and using the same structure. For that reason I suggest using this website. (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/#usgs302a) If you pick a state in the IDS (Texas for example) and click on spending for 2011, the lower right hand corner will show the State's real life spending divided into 6 major categories (pensions, health care, education, etc). If you click on 2011 in that graph, it takes you to a slightly more detailed breakdown of spending with a couple additional spending categories ("general government", "interest", etc. see Texas here) (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year2010_TX.html#usgs302), and each of those spending categories can be expanded to various subcategories (e.g. Education subdivides into spending for pre-primary through secondary education, tertiary education, and education not definable by level; each of those subcategories can also be subdivided into sub-sub categories of spending for even more details on spending. The taxes link for each state offers similar breakdowns of tax revenues from various sources in different levels of breakdown, from general to detailed. Whether you guys want to use the most detailed breakdowns available with all the spending/taxing subcategories available, or if you want to just use the most basic breakdown of about half a general categories listed here, is totally up to you. Likewise, the actual spending and taxing levels are totally up to you gas well. However, propose using this website's basic structure to design your own regional budget. It allows me as GM to make ready comparisons to RL spending and tax revenues levels, and again keeps us all on the same page. Its been invaluable in getting the Mideast budget off the ground. But as always, its your game and your decision. Any thoughts or comments here? That's a splendid idea; thank you very much for showing us that website. This will make the project a lot easier. I think we'll go as in-depth as we can in certain areas and leave the rest in the "basic" format if that's possible. Quote I am quite certain that Clause 4, Sub-clause B is a valid part of the 2010 Federal Stimulus Act. Did you make sure to check under Section 2, Sub-section e? I couldn't figure it out, but then my legalese isn't the greatest. If you can point out the problem, I'll be glad to adjust the balance. Also, great job with cataloging the initiatives. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 21, 2011, 09:49:09 PM 2.e.4.B is this:
Quote B. $2 billion to help needy students afford higher education. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 22, 2011, 06:04:02 PM Budget This category organizes previously passed initiatives, bills, and the like into Badger's categories. Once we have hard numbers, I'm going to put this all in a spreadsheet for aesthetics' sake. Regional Spending Pensions -Base: 39.6 billion (not including Puerto Rico) Healthcare -Base: 152.4 billion (not including Puerto Rico) Education -Base: 210.7 billion (not including Puerto Rico) -School Choice Initiative -Southeastern Educational Incentive Act Defense -Base: 0.6 billion (not including Puerto Rico) Welfare -Base: 48.7 billion (not including Puerto Rico) Protection -Base: 64.5 billion (not including Puerto Rico) Transportation -Base: 56.1 billion (not including Puerto Rico) -Duke Greenway Road Creation Act -Road Creation Act- Blanche Lincoln Boulevard- Monticello, Ark. General Government -Base: 22.3 billion (not including Puerto Rico) Other Spending -Base: 111.8 billion (not including Puerto Rico) -Pentagram Creation Act Interest -Base: 25 billion (not including Puerto Rico) 1% Total Spending -Base: 823.3 billion (not including Puerto Rico) Gross Public Debt -Base: 726.8 billion (not including Puerto Rico) Regional Revenues Bottom Line Balance Non-Budgetary Statistics Population Alabama 4,708,708 Arkansas 2,889,450 Florida 18,537,969 Georgia 9,829,211 Kentucky 4,314,113 Louisina 4,492,076 Mississippi 2,951,996 North Carolina 9,380,884 Puerto Rico 3,967,288 South Carolina 4,561,242 Tennessee 6,296,254 Texas 24,782,302 Total 80,882,282 Federal Deficit: $401,040,000,000 (as of November 2010) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 22, 2011, 06:59:21 PM Badger, we're going to need your help with the "Interest" section. Also, has there been inflation in Atlasian currency since July 23, 2010?
Looking through those categories, I think I will need to go back and add bills to the categories that do not explicit allocate money but imply that there is money involved so that we can get a better overall picture. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 22, 2011, 07:27:23 PM 2.e.4.B is this: Quote B. $2 billion to help needy students afford higher education. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 22, 2011, 10:02:30 PM There shouldn't be a 2.a.10 in the bill. ??? For reference, this (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/2010_Federal_Stimulus_Act) is the bill.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Brandon H on February 23, 2011, 01:45:06 AM I am fine with that proposal. Actually, I think I might make one post at the beginning of each week & edit it to include any new findings as the week progresses. That should be a good way to keep my thoughts organized. I was looking through wiki and, unless I read it wrong, the only laws cataloged are initiatives. I realize this is probably outside the scope of this committee but, if that's correct, something must be done to update it. Indeed, not a single law has been catalogued since the creation of the Legislature. I have a lot to do this weekend, but I'll try to get at least a couple of laws up on the Wiki. Prior to the creation of the Imperial Legislature, except for a universal legislature that briefly existed in 2006, all laws were passed by referendum. You should be able to find all of the old voting booths looking on the Voting Booth board. I made an effort to add initiatives and links to the voting booths somewhere in the wiki. I'll see if I can find it. This page contains links to most elections, though is missing 2009. https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Southeast_Regional_Elections You probably found this one already, but here is a list of all initiatives (prior to the creation of the legislature). https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Southeast_Law Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on February 23, 2011, 02:17:19 AM I am fine with that proposal. Actually, I think I might make one post at the beginning of each week & edit it to include any new findings as the week progresses. That should be a good way to keep my thoughts organized. I was looking through wiki and, unless I read it wrong, the only laws cataloged are initiatives. I realize this is probably outside the scope of this committee but, if that's correct, something must be done to update it. Indeed, not a single law has been catalogued since the creation of the Legislature. I have a lot to do this weekend, but I'll try to get at least a couple of laws up on the Wiki. Prior to the creation of the Imperial Legislature, except for a universal legislature that briefly existed in 2006, all laws were passed by referendum. You should be able to find all of the old voting booths looking on the Voting Booth board. I made an effort to add initiatives and links to the voting booths somewhere in the wiki. I'll see if I can find it. This page contains links to most elections, though is missing 2009. https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Southeast_Regional_Elections You probably found this one already, but here is a list of all initiatives (prior to the creation of the legislature). https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Southeast_Law Indeed, I've been working at updating the laws & have just sectioned it off by year, though I am planning on assigning proper numbers to all of the newer initiatives & bills. There are actually many laws that are not yet on there, but I've made it up to April 2009. Once that is up-to-date, I want to get all of the elections up there. Granted, most of them aren't interesting, but we ought to have them up anyway, Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on February 23, 2011, 05:23:34 PM There shouldn't be a 2.a.10 in the bill. ??? For reference, this (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/2010_Federal_Stimulus_Act) is the bill. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 01, 2011, 03:07:31 AM Section 2 of the Safe Abortion Initiative (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Safe_Abortion_Initiative), as passed on February 20, 2006:
Quote 2. A medical facility may apply for status as a licensed abortion provider by submitting to a safety inspection based on the health code in the state in which they are located and by purchasing a license for $10,000. Somehow, there do not appear to be any appropriations or any other taxes or fees imposed between 101 & 150. Maybe the IDS really is fiscally conservative. :P Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on March 01, 2011, 12:22:43 PM Badger, we're going to need your help with the "Interest" section. Also, has there been inflation in Atlasian currency since July 23, 2010? Looking through those categories, I think I will need to go back and add bills to the categories that do not explicit allocate money but imply that there is money involved so that we can get a better overall picture. Replied to your PM asking this (Florida was great last week :)), but I'll note it here for everyone. Interest has been, and continues to, run at a minimal rate of about 1% annually. If you want to jack everything up (revenues and expenditures) by about 1%, or just leave it as is for simplicities sake is fine with me. ;) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 01, 2011, 05:55:48 PM Badger, we're going to need your help with the "Interest" section. Also, has there been inflation in Atlasian currency since July 23, 2010? Looking through those categories, I think I will need to go back and add bills to the categories that do not explicit allocate money but imply that there is money involved so that we can get a better overall picture. Replied to your PM asking this (Florida was great last week :)), but I'll note it here for everyone. Interest has been, and continues to, run at a minimal rate of about 1% annually. If you want to jack everything up (revenues and expenditures) by about 1%, or just leave it as is for simplicities sake is fine with me. ;) Sorry to everyone for not getting much done; track season is in full gear. Maybe I'll be able to put some time in Thursday. I was thinking about something. Each category should have a base, the budget that was (hypothetically) created when this region was formed. All initiatives and bills should effect this base value rather than creating a new value. With that said, where do those starting numbers come from? Should we find this the same as population and add up real life state spending and revenue? The problem there is that we would be heavily in debt yet we are supposed to have $2 billion surplus. Could a item called "moderator love" be added to the "Interest" category to right this? Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 01, 2011, 06:16:49 PM Badger, we're going to need your help with the "Interest" section. Also, has there been inflation in Atlasian currency since July 23, 2010? Looking through those categories, I think I will need to go back and add bills to the categories that do not explicit allocate money but imply that there is money involved so that we can get a better overall picture. Replied to your PM asking this (Florida was great last week :)), but I'll note it here for everyone. Interest has been, and continues to, run at a minimal rate of about 1% annually. If you want to jack everything up (revenues and expenditures) by about 1%, or just leave it as is for simplicities sake is fine with me. ;) Sorry to everyone for not getting much done; track season is in full gear. Maybe I'll be able to put some time in Thursday. I was thinking about something. Each category should have a base, the budget that was (hypothetically) created when this region was formed. All initiatives and bills should effect this base value rather than creating a new value. With that said, where do those starting numbers come from? Should we find this the same as population and add up real life state spending and revenue? The problem there is that we would be heavily in debt yet we are supposed to have $2 billion surplus. Could a item called "moderator love" be added to the "Interest" category to right this? I suggest that we adopt the sum of the current revenue & spending of all the states that comprise the region in real life to be the base figures for the region. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 01, 2011, 08:51:14 PM Badger, we're going to need your help with the "Interest" section. Also, has there been inflation in Atlasian currency since July 23, 2010? Looking through those categories, I think I will need to go back and add bills to the categories that do not explicit allocate money but imply that there is money involved so that we can get a better overall picture. Replied to your PM asking this (Florida was great last week :)), but I'll note it here for everyone. Interest has been, and continues to, run at a minimal rate of about 1% annually. If you want to jack everything up (revenues and expenditures) by about 1%, or just leave it as is for simplicities sake is fine with me. ;) Sorry to everyone for not getting much done; track season is in full gear. Maybe I'll be able to put some time in Thursday. I was thinking about something. Each category should have a base, the budget that was (hypothetically) created when this region was formed. All initiatives and bills should effect this base value rather than creating a new value. With that said, where do those starting numbers come from? Should we find this the same as population and add up real life state spending and revenue? The problem there is that we would be heavily in debt yet we are supposed to have $2 billion surplus. Could a item called "moderator love" be added to the "Interest" category to right this? I suggest that we adopt the sum of the current revenue & spending of all the states that comprise the region in real life to be the base figures for the region. I wasn't sure whether to add up the state totals for interest and gross public debt; in the end I did but I can remove it if that was wrong. Also, does anyone know where to find budgetary statistics for Puerto Rico? Badger's excellent site did not include PR. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 07, 2011, 01:46:27 AM Section 2 of The Off-Shore Religious Organizations Initiative, as passed on April 24, 2007:
Quote Section Two 1. Incorporation as an Off-Shore religious institution shall cost a registration fee of $2,000 and a maintenance fee of $750 per year. 2. All fees mentioned in this initiative shall be annually adjusted for the CPI. Also note the Help The Southeast Study For Serious Act (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Help_The_Southeast_Study_For_Serious_Act), which makes use of funds provided to the region by the The Help Atlasia Study Act of 2009 (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/The_Help_Atlasia_Study_Act_of_2009). Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on March 07, 2011, 04:16:15 PM Badger, we're going to need your help with the "Interest" section. Also, has there been inflation in Atlasian currency since July 23, 2010? Looking through those categories, I think I will need to go back and add bills to the categories that do not explicit allocate money but imply that there is money involved so that we can get a better overall picture. Replied to your PM asking this (Florida was great last week :)), but I'll note it here for everyone. Interest has been, and continues to, run at a minimal rate of about 1% annually. If you want to jack everything up (revenues and expenditures) by about 1%, or just leave it as is for simplicities sake is fine with me. ;) Sorry to everyone for not getting much done; track season is in full gear. Maybe I'll be able to put some time in Thursday. I was thinking about something. Each category should have a base, the budget that was (hypothetically) created when this region was formed. All initiatives and bills should effect this base value rather than creating a new value. With that said, where do those starting numbers come from? Should we find this the same as population and add up real life state spending and revenue? The problem there is that we would be heavily in debt yet we are supposed to have $2 billion surplus. Could a item called "moderator love" be added to the "Interest" category to right this? I suggest that we adopt the sum of the current revenue & spending of all the states that comprise the region in real life to be the base figures for the region. I wasn't sure whether to add up the state totals for interest and gross public debt; in the end I did but I can remove it if that was wrong. Also, does anyone know where to find budgetary statistics for Puerto Rico? Badger's excellent site did not include PR. My advise re: PR---fake it. :P Seriously though, its only a relatively small share of the region's population (and thus, its economy), so unless you get lucky and easily find a website with readily available info, just base your figures on all the other states you have the figures for. If you really want, we can jack up the total spending and revenue numbers from those "mainland" states we have figures for by about 5% to account for PR's approximate share of the region's population, but even that's hardly necessary. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on March 07, 2011, 04:30:52 PM Badger, we're going to need your help with the "Interest" section. Also, has there been inflation in Atlasian currency since July 23, 2010? Looking through those categories, I think I will need to go back and add bills to the categories that do not explicit allocate money but imply that there is money involved so that we can get a better overall picture. Replied to your PM asking this (Florida was great last week :)), but I'll note it here for everyone. Interest has been, and continues to, run at a minimal rate of about 1% annually. If you want to jack everything up (revenues and expenditures) by about 1%, or just leave it as is for simplicities sake is fine with me. ;) Sorry to everyone for not getting much done; track season is in full gear. Maybe I'll be able to put some time in Thursday. I was thinking about something. Each category should have a base, the budget that was (hypothetically) created when this region was formed. All initiatives and bills should effect this base value rather than creating a new value. With that said, where do those starting numbers come from? Should we find this the same as population and add up real life state spending and revenue? The problem there is that we would be heavily in debt yet we are supposed to have $2 billion surplus. Could a item called "moderator love" be added to the "Interest" category to right this? I suggest that we adopt the sum of the current revenue & spending of all the states that comprise the region in real life to be the base figures for the region. Agreed re: spending. If you decide to cut or raise spending in any particular area then services may decrease/improve accordingly from current real world standards in IDS states. Though if any specific idea/policy is implemented to minimize the effects of the cuts on actual services provided, I'll consider it accordingly. The key word here is "specific", though; simply directing IDS agencies "to weed out waste and fraud" will account for little. Re: revenues though, the key will be what tax rates the IDS sets compared to RL. For example, see these posts re: the Mideast budget: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2789445#msg2789445 https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2769048#msg2769048 In the first link I "averaged" the RL income tax rates for states in the Mideast region (my calculations are explained therein), and compared it to the proposed regional income tax rate (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=128143.msg2731427#msg2731427) and determined the Mideast is facing almost a 50% :o drop in income tax revenue if the proposal is adopted. In the second link I similarly averaged the RL state sales tax levels to a "regional" rate of 5.7% with groceries and prescriptions exempted. The Mideast proposal has adopted this level so sales tax revenue levels will be similar to RL sales tax revenues. The point here is I agree, PiT, that RL spending levels should be the base for RL government services in the IDS. The revenue levels however will be of course based on whatever tax levels you set, using RL tax rates as the basis for computing the revenue it produces. Does that make sense? Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 07, 2011, 04:45:33 PM I don't know where I placed the link I had, but the region's laws are based on the 2006 Georgia statutes. As of 2009, Georgia had multiple income tax brackets, ranging from 1-6%.
To my knowledge no significant changes have been made in that area. I do not think that any significant changes have been made in re sales tax either, though we now have a sales tax on marijuana, something which no real life state does for obvious reasons. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 07, 2011, 05:15:30 PM I don't know where I placed the link I had, but the region's laws are based on the 2006 Georgia statutes. As of 2009, Georgia had multiple income tax brackets, ranging from 1-6%. To my knowledge no significant changes have been made in that area. I do not think that any significant changes have been made in re sales tax either, though we now have a sales tax on marijuana, something which no real life state does for obvious reasons. If anyone wants to help, average up the revenues. I'm not asking you, PiT (you've done plenty already), but we have two legislators, a Viceroy, an Attorney General, and two senators who are more than welcome to pitch in ;) ;) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 07, 2011, 05:46:46 PM I don't know where I placed the link I had, but the region's laws are based on the 2006 Georgia statutes. As of 2009, Georgia had multiple income tax brackets, ranging from 1-6%. To my knowledge no significant changes have been made in that area. I do not think that any significant changes have been made in re sales tax either, though we now have a sales tax on marijuana, something which no real life state does for obvious reasons. If anyone wants to help, average up the revenues. I'm not asking you, PiT (you've done plenty already), but we have two legislators, a Viceroy, an Attorney General, and two senators who are more than welcome to pitch in ;) ;) The problem is, we already did base it on Georgia (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Unified_Law_Code_Initiative). Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 07, 2011, 10:18:41 PM I don't know where I placed the link I had, but the region's laws are based on the 2006 Georgia statutes. As of 2009, Georgia had multiple income tax brackets, ranging from 1-6%. To my knowledge no significant changes have been made in that area. I do not think that any significant changes have been made in re sales tax either, though we now have a sales tax on marijuana, something which no real life state does for obvious reasons. If anyone wants to help, average up the revenues. I'm not asking you, PiT (you've done plenty already), but we have two legislators, a Viceroy, an Attorney General, and two senators who are more than welcome to pitch in ;) ;) The problem is, we already did base it on Georgia (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Unified_Law_Code_Initiative). Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 07, 2011, 10:26:55 PM I don't know where I placed the link I had, but the region's laws are based on the 2006 Georgia statutes. As of 2009, Georgia had multiple income tax brackets, ranging from 1-6%. To my knowledge no significant changes have been made in that area. I do not think that any significant changes have been made in re sales tax either, though we now have a sales tax on marijuana, something which no real life state does for obvious reasons. If anyone wants to help, average up the revenues. I'm not asking you, PiT (you've done plenty already), but we have two legislators, a Viceroy, an Attorney General, and two senators who are more than welcome to pitch in ;) ;) The problem is, we already did base it on Georgia (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Unified_Law_Code_Initiative). It does offer up a problem in that the laws passed by the Legislature are not "initiative laws", & could be interpreted as ineffectual in superseding the laws laid out by that initiative. The problem with Atlasia is that laws are often drafted in a haphazard fashion with little regard to consequences or existing statute. Of course, real-life politicians are probably plenty guilty of this as well. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 07, 2011, 10:29:34 PM I don't know where I placed the link I had, but the region's laws are based on the 2006 Georgia statutes. As of 2009, Georgia had multiple income tax brackets, ranging from 1-6%. To my knowledge no significant changes have been made in that area. I do not think that any significant changes have been made in re sales tax either, though we now have a sales tax on marijuana, something which no real life state does for obvious reasons. If anyone wants to help, average up the revenues. I'm not asking you, PiT (you've done plenty already), but we have two legislators, a Viceroy, an Attorney General, and two senators who are more than welcome to pitch in ;) ;) The problem is, we already did base it on Georgia (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Unified_Law_Code_Initiative). It does offer up a problem in that the laws passed by the Legislature are not "initiative laws", & could be interpreted as ineffectual in superseding the laws laid out by that initiative. The problem with Atlasia is that laws are often drafted in a haphazard fashion with little regard to consequences or existing statute. Of course, real-life politicians are probably plenty guilty of this as well. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 08, 2011, 12:05:44 AM I don't know where I placed the link I had, but the region's laws are based on the 2006 Georgia statutes. As of 2009, Georgia had multiple income tax brackets, ranging from 1-6%. To my knowledge no significant changes have been made in that area. I do not think that any significant changes have been made in re sales tax either, though we now have a sales tax on marijuana, something which no real life state does for obvious reasons. If anyone wants to help, average up the revenues. I'm not asking you, PiT (you've done plenty already), but we have two legislators, a Viceroy, an Attorney General, and two senators who are more than welcome to pitch in ;) ;) The problem is, we already did base it on Georgia (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Unified_Law_Code_Initiative). It does offer up a problem in that the laws passed by the Legislature are not "initiative laws", & could be interpreted as ineffectual in superseding the laws laid out by that initiative. The problem with Atlasia is that laws are often drafted in a haphazard fashion with little regard to consequences or existing statute. Of course, real-life politicians are probably plenty guilty of this as well. Heh. Inconvenient laws get disappeared in this region? Seems like this place is becoming more imperial all the time. >:D Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on March 08, 2011, 05:06:40 PM I don't know where I placed the link I had, but the region's laws are based on the 2006 Georgia statutes. As of 2009, Georgia had multiple income tax brackets, ranging from 1-6%. To my knowledge no significant changes have been made in that area. I do not think that any significant changes have been made in re sales tax either, though we now have a sales tax on marijuana, something which no real life state does for obvious reasons. If anyone wants to help, average up the revenues. I'm not asking you, PiT (you've done plenty already), but we have two legislators, a Viceroy, an Attorney General, and two senators who are more than welcome to pitch in ;) ;) The problem is, we already did base it on Georgia (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Unified_Law_Code_Initiative). It does offer up a problem in that the laws passed by the Legislature are not "initiative laws", & could be interpreted as ineffectual in superseding the laws laid out by that initiative. The problem with Atlasia is that laws are often drafted in a haphazard fashion with little regard to consequences or existing statute. Of course, real-life politicians are probably plenty guilty of this as well. All good points from both of you. One thing that needs to be done (and while ultimately the GM Office's duty, I'm MORE than willing to accept help from you active IDSers here) is to figure out the "average" RL tax rate (sales, income, excise, etc.) in IDS states so that it can be compared to whatever tax rates the IDS adopts (currently, it appears, identical to 2006 GA) and resulting revenue calculated. As a very simple example (with made up numbers) using the above websites cited, if IDS states in RL produced "$100 Billion" in annual sales tax revenue, and are determined to have an "average" sales tax rate of say, 5%, then if the IDS say adopts a 4% tax rate, then that would accordingly produce approximately $80 billion in annual revenue (4/5 of the $100 billion produced in RL by a 5% rate). See those posts I linked in the Mideast on how I "averaged" real life regional tax rates. It's pretty easy for sales tax. Income tax gets a little trickier as every state has their own income brackets, but its still doable as most states seemed to have a couple brackets for very, very low income that could easily be grouped together, plus maybe one or two brackets for the middle class and a similar number for the very wealthy. Its still quite doable to get a reasonable estimate of "average" tax rates that way. BTW: The IDS will certainly be given appropriate revenue for additional sources not present in real life, just as PiT mentioned the taxable sale of marijuana, or what I assume is the more permissive gambling laws allowing casinos and the like. Here's what I'd suggest as necessary steps: 1) Using this website (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year2011_TX.html), adding up the real life FY 2011 spending of the 10 IDS states combined (again, we can skip PR for now :P) in each of the major spending categories listed: (Pensions, Health Care, etc.). Its a bit tedious, but can probably be accomplished in about half an hour with a calculator. 2) Ditto for RL tax revenue from all the IDS states in each of the major tax types listed (income, "ad valorum" which are primarily sales taxes, etc.). 3) Figure out the "average" RL tax rates in these various listed categories (income, sales, etc). The real life tax rates are mostly available at these websites: http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_oh.html http://www.bankrate.com/brm/itax/edit/state/profiles/state_tax_Ohio.asp If anyone can present the RL tax rates together for review, I will GLADLY do the work of averaging them. 4) From there, its simply a matter of deciding what tax rates and spending the region has adopted/will adopt, and comparing it to RL taxes and spending to determine your budget. For example, a 4% sales tax will only bring in about 4/5 the revenue of a real life "average" sales tax of 5%. A 10% cut in education spending won't necessarily directly reduce test scores and/or raise local taxes by an exact 10%, but will surely be felt somehow, particularly in the long run. Once steps 1-3 are done for the first time, any changes to the budget over time are comparably easy to figure out. The trick is taking the hour or two to do those first 3 steps, but by working together and dividing the labor......... :) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 09, 2011, 12:41:53 AM Spending (AL,AR,FL,GA,LA,MS,NC,SC,TN,TX):
Pensions: $38,100,000,000 Health care: $121,900,000,000 Education: $73,400,000,000 Defense: $600,000,000 Welfare: $40,400,000,000 Protection: $21,500,000,000 Transportation: $28,200,000,000 General government: $7,400,000,000 Other spending: $18,700,000,000 Interest: $7,400,000,000 Balance: -$4,400,000,000 Σ: $352,100,000,000 Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Brandon H on March 09, 2011, 01:42:50 AM I don't know where I placed the link I had, but the region's laws are based on the 2006 Georgia statutes. As of 2009, Georgia had multiple income tax brackets, ranging from 1-6%. To my knowledge no significant changes have been made in that area. I do not think that any significant changes have been made in re sales tax either, though we now have a sales tax on marijuana, something which no real life state does for obvious reasons. If anyone wants to help, average up the revenues. I'm not asking you, PiT (you've done plenty already), but we have two legislators, a Viceroy, an Attorney General, and two senators who are more than welcome to pitch in ;) ;) The problem is, we already did base it on Georgia (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Unified_Law_Code_Initiative). It does offer up a problem in that the laws passed by the Legislature are not "initiative laws", & could be interpreted as ineffectual in superseding the laws laid out by that initiative. The problem with Atlasia is that laws are often drafted in a haphazard fashion with little regard to consequences or existing statute. Of course, real-life politicians are probably plenty guilty of this as well. If our now elected legislature has replaced the Initiative process as the law making body of the region, then it should have the power to repeal / amend initiatives. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 09, 2011, 02:46:14 AM I don't know where I placed the link I had, but the region's laws are based on the 2006 Georgia statutes. As of 2009, Georgia had multiple income tax brackets, ranging from 1-6%. To my knowledge no significant changes have been made in that area. I do not think that any significant changes have been made in re sales tax either, though we now have a sales tax on marijuana, something which no real life state does for obvious reasons. If anyone wants to help, average up the revenues. I'm not asking you, PiT (you've done plenty already), but we have two legislators, a Viceroy, an Attorney General, and two senators who are more than welcome to pitch in ;) ;) The problem is, we already did base it on Georgia (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Unified_Law_Code_Initiative). It does offer up a problem in that the laws passed by the Legislature are not "initiative laws", & could be interpreted as ineffectual in superseding the laws laid out by that initiative. The problem with Atlasia is that laws are often drafted in a haphazard fashion with little regard to consequences or existing statute. Of course, real-life politicians are probably plenty guilty of this as well. If our now elected legislature has replaced the Initiative process as the law making body of the region, then it should have the power to repeal / amend initiatives. The initiative process still exists, though. It just isn't ever used except for passing amendments. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on March 09, 2011, 09:22:21 AM Spending (AL,AR,FL,GA,LA,MS,NC,SC,TN,TX): Pensions: $38,100,000,000 Health care: $121,900,000,000 Education: $73,400,000,000 Defense: $600,000,000 Welfare: $40,400,000,000 Protection: $21,500,000,000 Transportation: $28,200,000,000 General government: $7,400,000,000 Other spending: $18,700,000,000 Interest: $7,400,000,000 Balance: -$4,400,000,000 Σ: $352,100,000,000 AWESOME start, Emperor! :D Though for future reference you could probably save some typing by listing the figures in Billions to the first decimal point, e.g. "$38.1 Bil" for Pensions. ;) BTW: Any idea what the $600 mil in "defense" spending is? IIRC it was all from the TX budget. Maybe Perry was serious about secession. ;) So, on to step #2? Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 09, 2011, 11:48:59 AM I've always preferred to write out the figures. I suppose it's probably because $100,000,000,000 looks bigger than $100 billion, which is conducive to my ideological tack. :P
If you drill down the defense category, you find the bulk of the spending goes to G85, which appears to be miscellaneous veterans' services (http://www.census.gov/govs/www/classfunc85.html). The box on the bottom suggests that it has to do with "land & existing structures", but the Exclusions section states that retirement homes or grants & loans for home improvement/purchase would be reported differently. Not too sure what happened there. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 09, 2011, 04:29:31 PM Spending (AL,AR,FL,GA,LA,MS,NC,SC,TN,TX): Pensions: $38,100,000,000 Health care: $121,900,000,000 Education: $73,400,000,000 Defense: $600,000,000 Welfare: $40,400,000,000 Protection: $21,500,000,000 Transportation: $28,200,000,000 General government: $7,400,000,000 Other spending: $18,700,000,000 Interest: $7,400,000,000 Balance: -$4,400,000,000 Σ: $352,100,000,000 What is the Greek symbol for? Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 09, 2011, 05:17:00 PM Spending (AL,AR,FL,GA,LA,MS,NC,SC,TN,TX): Pensions: $38,100,000,000 Health care: $121,900,000,000 Education: $73,400,000,000 Defense: $600,000,000 Welfare: $40,400,000,000 Protection: $21,500,000,000 Transportation: $28,200,000,000 General government: $7,400,000,000 Other spending: $18,700,000,000 Interest: $7,400,000,000 Balance: -$4,400,000,000 Σ: $352,100,000,000 What is the Greek symbol for? The discrepancies are pretty large, too. However, I'm pretty sure that Kentucky's not part of the region, so that at least explains some of it. The letter is sigma. It is used in mathematics to denote summations (I added up all of the other categories under the sigma category), though its use is rather uncommon. It appears most often in the formulation of infinite sequences & series, which first appears near the end of single-variable calculus. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 09, 2011, 05:43:06 PM Spending (AL,AR,FL,GA,LA,MS,NC,SC,TN,TX): Pensions: $38,100,000,000 Health care: $121,900,000,000 Education: $73,400,000,000 Defense: $600,000,000 Welfare: $40,400,000,000 Protection: $21,500,000,000 Transportation: $28,200,000,000 General government: $7,400,000,000 Other spending: $18,700,000,000 Interest: $7,400,000,000 Balance: -$4,400,000,000 Σ: $352,100,000,000 What is the Greek symbol for? The discrepancies are pretty large, too. However, I'm pretty sure that Kentucky's not part of the region, so that at least explains some of it. The letter is sigma. It is used in mathematics to denote summations (I added up all of the other categories under the sigma category), though its use is rather uncommon. It appears most often in the formulation of infinite sequences & series, which first appears near the end of single-variable calculus. Damn. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 09, 2011, 08:30:18 PM Looking at the high rate of spending you attributed to education, did you calculate it for both state & local spending? I only did state spending, principally because I wanted to avoid the added complication of dealing with revenue due to local taxes. Leave the municipalities to fend for themselves, I say. :P
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 09, 2011, 09:05:31 PM Looking at the high rate of spending you attributed to education, did you calculate it for both state & local spending? I only did state spending, principally because I wanted to avoid the added complication of dealing with revenue due to local taxes. Leave the municipalities to fend for themselves, I say. :P Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on March 11, 2011, 08:42:38 AM Looking at the high rate of spending you attributed to education, did you calculate it for both state & local spending? I only did state spending, principally because I wanted to avoid the added complication of dealing with revenue due to local taxes. Leave the municipalities to fend for themselves, I say. :P For determining a regional budget, it should list state revenues and spending only. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 11, 2011, 12:27:54 PM Looking at the high rate of spending you attributed to education, did you calculate it for both state & local spending? I only did state spending, principally because I wanted to avoid the added complication of dealing with revenue due to local taxes. Leave the municipalities to fend for themselves, I say. :P For determining a regional budget, it should list state revenues and spending only. Interesting isn't it, that we give more autonomy to cities & counties than states here in the IDS? Cities & counties get to levy their own taxes whereas states depend on the region for revenue. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on March 11, 2011, 12:33:09 PM Looking at the high rate of spending you attributed to education, did you calculate it for both state & local spending? I only did state spending, principally because I wanted to avoid the added complication of dealing with revenue due to local taxes. Leave the municipalities to fend for themselves, I say. :P For determining a regional budget, it should list state revenues and spending only. Interesting isn't it, that we give more autonomy to cities & counties than states here in the IDS? Cities & counties get to levy their own taxes whereas states depend on the region for revenue. Well, are "states" really political sub-entities of regions in Atlasia? My take on it is "no". It seems regions replaced states in the federal/regional/local divide of federalism. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 11, 2011, 12:39:20 PM Looking at the high rate of spending you attributed to education, did you calculate it for both state & local spending? I only did state spending, principally because I wanted to avoid the added complication of dealing with revenue due to local taxes. Leave the municipalities to fend for themselves, I say. :P For determining a regional budget, it should list state revenues and spending only. Interesting isn't it, that we give more autonomy to cities & counties than states here in the IDS? Cities & counties get to levy their own taxes whereas states depend on the region for revenue. Well, are "states" really political sub-entities of regions in Atlasia? My take on it is "no". It seems regions replaced states in the federal/regional/local divide of federalism. The IDS has clearly avowed the existence of state governments in its recent responses to stimulus bills, however, & did so a long time ago with the Community Choice Initiative (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Community_Choice_Initiative). Seeing as how the role of states was something that has been little touched on by the federal government in the past, I saw no harm in referring to them. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 11, 2011, 05:12:48 PM Looking at the high rate of spending you attributed to education, did you calculate it for both state & local spending? I only did state spending, principally because I wanted to avoid the added complication of dealing with revenue due to local taxes. Leave the municipalities to fend for themselves, I say. :P For determining a regional budget, it should list state revenues and spending only. Interesting isn't it, that we give more autonomy to cities & counties than states here in the IDS? Cities & counties get to levy their own taxes whereas states depend on the region for revenue. Well, are "states" really political sub-entities of regions in Atlasia? My take on it is "no". It seems regions replaced states in the federal/regional/local divide of federalism. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 18, 2011, 01:58:04 PM This isn't dead by the way; I just didn't have any free time this past week. I will edit this post over the weekend with our revenue and we can get back on track.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 19, 2011, 12:14:54 PM I was actually waiting for today to get back to it as well. I'm on Easter break now, so I should have time to do this & finish updating the regional statute.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 19, 2011, 08:19:44 PM Spending (AL,AR,FL,GA,LA,MS,NC,SC,TN,TX):
Pensions: $3.81 billion Health care: $121.9 billion Education: $73.4 billion Defense: $0.6 billion Welfare: $40.4 billion Protection: $21.5 billion Transportation: $28.2 billion General government: $7.4 billion Other spending: $18.7 billion Interest: $7.4 billion Balance: -$4.4 billion Σ: $352.1 billion Revenue (AL,AR,FL,GA,LA,MS,NC,SC,TN,TX): Income Taxes: 35.6 billion Social Security Taxes: 15.1 billion Ad-valorem Taxes: 252.3 billion Fees and Charges: 107 billion Business and Other Revenue: 132.5 billion Total Direct Revenue: 544.5 billion Gross Public Debt: 598.7 billion Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 19, 2011, 08:20:39 PM Phew! The leg work is done. Now we can begin the arduous task of syncing the above budget with our region's legislative history.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 19, 2011, 08:50:09 PM Great job! Also, a $200 billion surplus seems a little too good to be true. :P
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 19, 2011, 09:13:55 PM Great job! Also, a $200 billion surplus seems a little too good to be true. :P Under that plan, the IDS would be down to $90 billion in moderator credit; $0 would be reached in December 2011. EDIT: Actually, it will take a tad more that $200 billion to create a $200 billion surplus (duh!). Instead of subtracting a $10 billion a month, we should subtract 5% of that original number. If it's ok with you PiT, I will PM Badger about this. Also, looking at the bills and initiatives that need to be integrated into our budget, I think we will need to add all of the subheadings. :( Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 20, 2011, 11:58:56 AM PMing Badger is fine with me. As for adding the bills & initiatives, I suspect that that might improve our standing if anything, given that the region has not passed that many spending bills.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 20, 2011, 12:39:31 PM Note that Puerto Rico is not including in the Base numbers. Base numbers are derived from this (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year2011_TX.html) site and are the aggregate totals of the following states; AL,AR,FL,GA,LA,MS,NC,SC,TN,TX.
Note also that each base has an implied subheading. In the future, this will most likely need to be calculated. The bills and their relevant information are sorted by their implied subheading (the italicized bullet). If the bill falls under a sub-subheading, that is indicated like such: Subheading/Subheading. If you have any complaints about where I have placed certain pieces of a legislature, please tell me. Spending Pensions-Base: $3.81 billion Health care: -Base: $121.9 billion Education: -Base: $73.4 billion (assuming Section 1 of the School Choice Initiative does not invalidate it) -Tertiary Education/Other Capital Outlay-Higher Education/Southeastern Educational Incentive Act: $3.5 billion -Pre-Primary through Secondary Education/Other Capital Outlay - Elementary and Secondary Education/School Choice Initiative: $56.4 billion -Total: $133.3 billion Defense: -Base: $0.6 billion Welfare: -Base: $40.4 billion Protection: -Base: $21.5 billion Transportation: -Base: $28.2 billion General government: -Base: $7.4 billion Other spending: -Base: $18.7 billion -Cultural Services/Pentagram Creation Act -Total: ? Interest: -Base: $7.4 billion Balance: -Base: -$4.4 billion Σ: -Base: $352.1 billion Revenue Income Taxes: -Base: $35.6 billion -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Put the "free" back in Free Enterprise Bill -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4 -Corporate Tax Rate: 8.6% -Personal Income Tax Rate: effectively 6% -Total: ? Social Security Taxes: -Base: $15.1 billion Ad-valorem Taxes: -Base: $252.3 billion -Excise Taxes/Tax-Alcoholic Beverage Sales/Southeast Alcohol Initiative, Section 8: $1.00/proof liter -Excise Taxes/Tax-Tobacco Products Sales/Southeast Tobacco Initiative, Section 6: $0.04/cigarette, $0.08/cigar, $2.00/kg tobacco -Excise Taxes/Tax-Marijuana Products Sales: $3.00/ounce -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: 80% of standard electricity excise tax -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Biomass Initiative, Section 3: 80% of standard electricity excise tax -Property Taxes/Tax-Property/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4 -Transportation/Tax-Motor Fuel Sales/Transportation Commission Initiative, Chapter 3, Section 22: $0.08/liter -Transportation/Tax-Motor Vehicle License/Fair Consequences Initiative, Section 3 -License/Tax-Other License/Off-Shore Religious Organizations Initiative, Section 2 -Total: ? Fees and Charges: -Base: $107 billion -Other/Charges-All Other/Pentagram Creation Act -Other/Charges-All Other/Safe Roads Initiative, Section 6 -Total: ? Business and Other Revenue: -Base: $132.5 billion -Other/Miscellaneous-Net Lottery Revenue/Southeast Lottery Regulations, Section 6 (Amended by Expanding Choice Initiative) -Total: ? Total Direct Revenue: -base: $544.5 billion Gross Public Debt: -Base: $598.7 billion Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 20, 2011, 02:29:58 PM I am unsure of what to do with the stimulus money. The sections that allocated money for the construction of different power generating facilities did not provide money for the continued maintenance of said facilities so we will have to calculate that somehow.
Also, if anyone in the IDS (heck, anyone who's reading this) is feeling helpful, could you find budget statistics for Puerto Rico? Preferably with breakdowns similar to this (http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/revenue.php?year=2011&state=GA&units=b&fy=fy12&gov=&pie=#usgs30250) website but anything will do. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 20, 2011, 03:00:35 PM Sections 6 & 7 of the Expanding Choice Initiative, as passed on July 18, 2005: 6. The Southeast shall also establish a Regional Education Tax to subsidize the Lottery Education Fund. This tax may only be collected to finance the Student Scholarships and all profits will be added directly to the Southeast Lottery Education Fund. 7. The amount of the Regional Education Tax shall be determined every fiscal year by dividing the monetary needs of the School System, minus the funds in the Lottery Education Fund, by each Resident of the Southeast. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 20, 2011, 03:30:29 PM Ok, all of the bills and initiatives posted in this thread have been added to the budget, barring the cases mentioned in the above two posts and the Transportation Fund which I was also not sure what to do with.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 20, 2011, 04:08:09 PM From the Southeast Lottery Regulations,
Quote Section 6 - Lottery General Fund A Lottery General Fund shall be established. This Fund shall receive monies from the operation of the games run by Lottery Commission as described above. It shall be used to pay the expenses of administering the games, including promotional expenses. No more than 10% of the monies entered into the Lottery General Fund in any fiscal year may be used for administrative expenses. At the end of each fiscal quarter, 90% of the monies in the Lottery General Fund shall be transferred to the Lottery Education Fund. Section 7 - Lottery Education Fund A Lottery Education Fund shall be established. This fund shall receive monies from the Lottery General Fund. It shall be used to pay the expenses of administering the scholarships established by the Lottery Initiative and to fund the scholarships themselves. No more than 10% of the monies entered into the Lottery Education Fund in any fiscal year may be used for administrative expenses. If I am reading it right, education gets funds from 90% of lottery revenue & anything left unpaid for is handled by the Education Tax. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on March 21, 2011, 03:36:46 PM Great job! Also, a $200 billion surplus seems a little too good to be true. :P Under that plan, the IDS would be down to $90 billion in moderator credit; $0 would be reached in December 2011. EDIT: Actually, it will take a tad more that $200 billion to create a $200 billion surplus (duh!). Instead of subtracting a $10 billion a month, we should subtract 5% of that original number. If it's ok with you PiT, I will PM Badger about this. Also, looking at the bills and initiatives that need to be integrated into our budget, I think we will need to add all of the subheadings. :( Hmmmmm. I'll have to think about this. Actually many states do have a rainy day fund. And while $200 billion may seem a lot, spread out over 10 southern states (including TX and FL)? Maybe not that farfetched. Anyone have an idea (or willing to check) what the southern states RL rainy day fund (or equivilent) status is like? Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 21, 2011, 04:22:17 PM Great job! Also, a $200 billion surplus seems a little too good to be true. :P Under that plan, the IDS would be down to $90 billion in moderator credit; $0 would be reached in December 2011. EDIT: Actually, it will take a tad more that $200 billion to create a $200 billion surplus (duh!). Instead of subtracting a $10 billion a month, we should subtract 5% of that original number. If it's ok with you PiT, I will PM Badger about this. Also, looking at the bills and initiatives that need to be integrated into our budget, I think we will need to add all of the subheadings. :( Hmmmmm. I'll have to think about this. Actually many states do have a rainy day fund. And while $200 billion may seem a lot, spread out over 10 southern states (including TX and FL)? Maybe not that farfetched. Anyone have an idea (or willing to check) what the southern states RL rainy day fund (or equivilent) status is like? Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on March 25, 2011, 12:25:24 PM Great job! Also, a $200 billion surplus seems a little too good to be true. :P Under that plan, the IDS would be down to $90 billion in moderator credit; $0 would be reached in December 2011. EDIT: Actually, it will take a tad more that $200 billion to create a $200 billion surplus (duh!). Instead of subtracting a $10 billion a month, we should subtract 5% of that original number. If it's ok with you PiT, I will PM Badger about this. Also, looking at the bills and initiatives that need to be integrated into our budget, I think we will need to add all of the subheadings. :( Hmmmmm. I'll have to think about this. Actually many states do have a rainy day fund. And while $200 billion may seem a lot, spread out over 10 southern states (including TX and FL)? Maybe not that farfetched. Anyone have an idea (or willing to check) what the southern states RL rainy day fund (or equivalent) status is like? Looking at the underlying data (http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/content/data/rainydayfunds.xls) for that graph, it appears Georgia's rainy day fund was only at 5.3% of its annual expenditures. Most other IDS states varied from Arkansas (zilch) to Texas (10.2%). I have studiously determined that the $200 Billion surplus appears, sadly, to have primarily resulted from accounting errors and overestimation of future receipts which were heavily decimated by the recession. There's also mysterious withdrawls to a Cayman Islands account simply listed under "NCYnk". ;D Even 10% I'm afraid is not realistic when only Texas meets that level in RL. That said, based on TX having a hugely disproportionate share of regional revenues, some other states being in the 5-10% range, plus a bonus for Yelnoc finding this website and doing preliminary calculations (that's always looked upon favorably by the GM's Office ;)), I'll put the IDS Rainy Day Fund balance at exactly (coincidentally) $25 Bil (or nearly 8% of annual expenditures). If anyone thinks my numbers are off or unfair in someway, though, I'm always ready to listen. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 25, 2011, 03:21:53 PM Great job! Also, a $200 billion surplus seems a little too good to be true. :P Under that plan, the IDS would be down to $90 billion in moderator credit; $0 would be reached in December 2011. EDIT: Actually, it will take a tad more that $200 billion to create a $200 billion surplus (duh!). Instead of subtracting a $10 billion a month, we should subtract 5% of that original number. If it's ok with you PiT, I will PM Badger about this. Also, looking at the bills and initiatives that need to be integrated into our budget, I think we will need to add all of the subheadings. :( Hmmmmm. I'll have to think about this. Actually many states do have a rainy day fund. And while $200 billion may seem a lot, spread out over 10 southern states (including TX and FL)? Maybe not that farfetched. Anyone have an idea (or willing to check) what the southern states RL rainy day fund (or equivalent) status is like? Looking at the underlying data (http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/content/data/rainydayfunds.xls) for that graph, it appears Georgia's rainy day fund was only at 5.3% of its annual expenditures. Most other IDS states varied from Arkansas (zilch) to Texas (10.2%). I have studiously determined that the $200 Billion surplus appears, sadly, to have primarily resulted from accounting errors and overestimation of future receipts which were heavily decimated by the recession. There's also mysterious withdrawls to a Cayman Islands account simply listed under "NCYnk". ;D Even 10% I'm afraid is not realistic when only Texas meets that level in RL. That said, based on TX having a hugely disproportionate share of regional revenues, some other states being in the 5-10% range, plus a bonus for Yelnoc finding this website and doing preliminary calculations (that's always looked upon favorably by the GM's Office ;)), I'll put the IDS Rainy Day Fund balance at exactly (coincidentally) $25 Bil (or nearly 8% of annual expenditures). If anyone thinks my numbers are off or unfair in someway, though, I'm always ready to listen. Anyway, looking at the balance sheet I put together at the top of the page, I think we will need to add up all of the sub-categories to actually be able to find the budget. Oye vey. I've got track tomorrow but I'll see what I can do Sunday. In the meantime, I'm putting out the call to our other citizens and elected officials. Pull your weight! Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 25, 2011, 07:50:27 PM Education:
Base: $73.4 billion Southeastern Educational Incentive Act: $3.5 billion School Choice Initiative: $56.4 billion Total: $133.3 billion Just a thought, what does everyone make of Section 1 of the School Choice Initiative?: Quote Section 1 1. All direct regional funding to schools, either district, private or religious, shall be abolished. 2. State departments of education shall be abolished and merged into a Regional Department of Education. It seems to me that it should reduce the base, but I'm not sure by how much. Also, regional tax rates! Corporate tax: 8.6% Personal income tax: effectively 6% Alcohol sales tax: $1.00/proof liter Tobacco sales tax: $0.04/cigarette, $0.08/cigar, $2.00/kg tobacco Liquid fuel tax: $0.08/liter Marijuana tax: $3.00/ounce Excise taxes on nuclear & biomass-produced electricity are 80% of the normal excise tax on electricity, whatever that might be. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Brandon H on March 26, 2011, 01:59:03 PM Also, regional tax rates! Corporate tax: 8.6% Personal income tax: effectively 6% Alcohol sales tax: $1.00/proof liter Tobacco sales tax: $0.04/cigarette, $0.08/cigar, $2.00/kg tobacco Liquid fuel tax: $0.08/liter Marijuana tax: $3.00/ounce Excise taxes on nuclear & biomass-produced electricity are 80% of the normal excise tax on electricity, whatever that might be. Does this mean a 50 proof bottle of alcohol would have $50 tax? A little bit excessive. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 26, 2011, 03:04:54 PM Also, regional tax rates! Corporate tax: 8.6% Personal income tax: effectively 6% Alcohol sales tax: $1.00/proof liter Tobacco sales tax: $0.04/cigarette, $0.08/cigar, $2.00/kg tobacco Liquid fuel tax: $0.08/liter Marijuana tax: $3.00/ounce Excise taxes on nuclear & biomass-produced electricity are 80% of the normal excise tax on electricity, whatever that might be. Does this mean a 50 proof bottle of alcohol would have $50 tax? A little bit excessive. I think it means that the tax is $1 per liter of 100-proof alcohol, or per half-liter of pure alcohol. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 27, 2011, 05:51:40 PM Education: Base: $73.4 billion Southeastern Educational Incentive Act: $3.5 billion School Choice Initiative: $56.4 billion Total: $133.3 billion Quote Just a thought, what does everyone make of Section 1 of the School Choice Initiative?: Aw crap. Looks like we don't have a base anymore. They stopped regional education spending and then went and abolished the state Departments of Education. Meaning that all public schools are funded exclusively at the county level (with, of course, unfunded Federal mandates). If I'm right, I'll place a bill in the pipeline to rectify the situation.Quote Section 1 1. All direct regional funding to schools, either district, private or religious, shall be abolished. 2. State departments of education shall be abolished and merged into a Regional Department of Education. It seems to me that it should reduce the base, but I'm not sure by how much. Quote Also, regional tax rates! i luv uCorporate tax: 8.6% Personal income tax: effectively 6% Alcohol sales tax: $1.00/proof liter Tobacco sales tax: $0.04/cigarette, $0.08/cigar, $2.00/kg tobacco Liquid fuel tax: $0.08/liter Marijuana tax: $3.00/ounce Excise taxes on nuclear & biomass-produced electricity are 80% of the normal excise tax on electricity, whatever that might be. Updating the balance sheet.... Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 27, 2011, 06:16:56 PM Education: Base: $73.4 billion Southeastern Educational Incentive Act: $3.5 billion School Choice Initiative: $56.4 billion Total: $133.3 billion It's actually a very good question. I used the enrollment figures in the infobox of this link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States). For the SEIA, I divided the post-secondary numbers by 5 to estimate the number of such students in the IDS & multiplied by 1,000 to find the cost of tax credits to that number of students. For the SCI, I divided the primary school figures by 5 & then multiplied them by 4,000 for the value of the tax credits. I then divided the secondary school figures by 5 & multiplied them by 5,000; that is the middle bracket for vouchers & the Wikipedia article on median incomes by state suggested that the median income for the region probably falls in that bracket, so it seemed like a reasonable estimate. I then added those two together. Just a thought, what does everyone make of Section 1 of the School Choice Initiative?: Quote Section 1 1. All direct regional funding to schools, either district, private or religious, shall be abolished. 2. State departments of education shall be abolished and merged into a Regional Department of Education. It seems to me that it should reduce the base, but I'm not sure by how much. I don't think that it should completely eliminate the base, since there is a certain amount of education funding that doesn't go directly to schools. If nothing else, we would still be paying for salaries for regional-level education administration, as pointless as that would be in the absence of regional-level education expenditures. I'd like legal expertise on this matter before taking any action on it though, as I don't know too much about education expenditures. Quote Also, regional tax rates! i luv uCorporate tax: 8.6% Personal income tax: effectively 6% Alcohol sales tax: $1.00/proof liter Tobacco sales tax: $0.04/cigarette, $0.08/cigar, $2.00/kg tobacco Liquid fuel tax: $0.08/liter Marijuana tax: $3.00/ounce Excise taxes on nuclear & biomass-produced electricity are 80% of the normal excise tax on electricity, whatever that might be. Updating the balance sheet.... If we can find the average rate in the region for each of those items (except marijuana, of course), we can compare them to our regional rates & adjust the tax revenue accordingly. That should produce a pretty good estimate of our total tax revenue. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 27, 2011, 06:33:21 PM Just a thought, what does everyone make of Section 1 of the School Choice Initiative?: Quote Section 1 1. All direct regional funding to schools, either district, private or religious, shall be abolished. 2. State departments of education shall be abolished and merged into a Regional Department of Education. It seems to me that it should reduce the base, but I'm not sure by how much. I don't think that it should completely eliminate the base, since there is a certain amount of education funding that doesn't go directly to schools. If nothing else, we would still be paying for salaries for regional-level education administration, as pointless as that would be in the absence of regional-level education expenditures. I'd like legal expertise on this matter before taking any action on it though, as I don't know too much about education expenditures. Current and future legislators, listen up! Always make sure every word in a bill says exactly what you want it to say! Quote Quote Also, regional tax rates! i luv uCorporate tax: 8.6% Personal income tax: effectively 6% Alcohol sales tax: $1.00/proof liter Tobacco sales tax: $0.04/cigarette, $0.08/cigar, $2.00/kg tobacco Liquid fuel tax: $0.08/liter Marijuana tax: $3.00/ounce Excise taxes on nuclear & biomass-produced electricity are 80% of the normal excise tax on electricity, whatever that might be. Updating the balance sheet.... If we can find the average rate in the region for each of those items (except marijuana, of course), we can compare them to our regional rates & adjust the tax revenue accordingly. That should produce a pretty good estimate of our total tax revenue. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 27, 2011, 06:47:08 PM Just a thought, what does everyone make of Section 1 of the School Choice Initiative?: Quote Section 1 1. All direct regional funding to schools, either district, private or religious, shall be abolished. 2. State departments of education shall be abolished and merged into a Regional Department of Education. It seems to me that it should reduce the base, but I'm not sure by how much. I don't think that it should completely eliminate the base, since there is a certain amount of education funding that doesn't go directly to schools. If nothing else, we would still be paying for salaries for regional-level education administration, as pointless as that would be in the absence of regional-level education expenditures. I'd like legal expertise on this matter before taking any action on it though, as I don't know too much about education expenditures. Current and future legislators, listen up! Always make sure every word in a bill says exactly what you want it to say! Indeed, that's why I always offer amendments to bills to make them more specific. I think there's a very real possibility to be considered that the School Choice Initiative has effectively eliminated state universities in the region. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 27, 2011, 07:05:18 PM I'll keep this page updated with my endeavors in calculating those regional tax rates.
My initial thoughts are that tax rates are going to be difficult to come by using that US Government Revenue site; it gives each states revenue from these sources but not the actual rates (see the top of page 6). We do have two states in the IDS, Florida and Texas, which institute no income tax. To further complicate matters, Texas does not have a normal corporate tax, opting instead for a gross margins business tax. We really should standardize the IDS tax code. That thought leads down an interesting road. We are assuming that the states are collecting taxes and sending all of the revenue to us. Does this mean that all State Departments are unfunded? Meaning, in turn, that any services not explicitly legislated by the Southeast Region are not in place? I can't believe that in five years no one has thought to look at the logistics of the region! Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 27, 2011, 07:36:37 PM I'll keep this page updated with my endeavors in calculating those regional tax rates. My initial thoughts are that tax rates are going to be difficult to come by using that US Government Revenue site; it gives each states revenue from these sources but not the actual rates (see the top of page 6). We do have two states in the IDS, Florida and Texas, which institute no income tax. To further complicate matters, Texas does not have a normal corporate tax, opting instead for a gross margins business tax. We really should standardize the IDS tax code. That thought leads down an interesting road. We are assuming that the states are collecting taxes and sending all of the revenue to us. Does this mean that all State Departments are unfunded? Meaning, in turn, that any services not explicitly legislated by the Southeast Region are not in place? I can't believe that in five years no one has thought to look at the logistics of the region! The assumption I've been making was that State Departments have been partially subsumed into Regional Departments, so we have the same amount of bureaucracy, but split between two levels of authority. After this is done, I think we should pass an omnibus tax bill, setting specific rates for each item in an easy-to-find location. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 27, 2011, 07:42:45 PM I'll keep this page updated with my endeavors in calculating those regional tax rates. My initial thoughts are that tax rates are going to be difficult to come by using that US Government Revenue site; it gives each states revenue from these sources but not the actual rates (see the top of page 6). We do have two states in the IDS, Florida and Texas, which institute no income tax. To further complicate matters, Texas does not have a normal corporate tax, opting instead for a gross margins business tax. We really should standardize the IDS tax code. That thought leads down an interesting road. We are assuming that the states are collecting taxes and sending all of the revenue to us. Does this mean that all State Departments are unfunded? Meaning, in turn, that any services not explicitly legislated by the Southeast Region are not in place? I can't believe that in five years no one has thought to look at the logistics of the region! The assumption I've been making was that State Departments have been partially subsumed into Regional Departments, so we have the same amount of bureaucracy, but split between two levels of authority. After this is done, I think we should pass an omnibus tax bill, setting specific rates for each item in an easy-to-find location. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 27, 2011, 08:13:08 PM I'll keep this page updated with my endeavors in calculating those regional tax rates. My initial thoughts are that tax rates are going to be difficult to come by using that US Government Revenue site; it gives each states revenue from these sources but not the actual rates (see the top of page 6). We do have two states in the IDS, Florida and Texas, which institute no income tax. To further complicate matters, Texas does not have a normal corporate tax, opting instead for a gross margins business tax. We really should standardize the IDS tax code. That thought leads down an interesting road. We are assuming that the states are collecting taxes and sending all of the revenue to us. Does this mean that all State Departments are unfunded? Meaning, in turn, that any services not explicitly legislated by the Southeast Region are not in place? I can't believe that in five years no one has thought to look at the logistics of the region! The assumption I've been making was that State Departments have been partially subsumed into Regional Departments, so we have the same amount of bureaucracy, but split between two levels of authority. After this is done, I think we should pass an omnibus tax bill, setting specific rates for each item in an easy-to-find location. We do have to calculate the rates first, & I do think the rates I provided will assist in calculating the bulk of the regional revenue. However, I think we should also, once we've determined the exact relations between taxes & revenue, adjust the rates to balance the budget while placing a minimal tax burden on the citizens. For the purpose of making these adjustments, I think we can ignore the Laffer curve & assume a linear relation between tax rate & revenue. Obviously that wouldn't hold for determining federal taxes vs. revenue, but I think the regional taxes are low enough that the effects of tax avoidance are essentially null. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on March 28, 2011, 12:57:19 PM I'll keep this page updated with my endeavors in calculating those regional tax rates. My initial thoughts are that tax rates are going to be difficult to come by using that US Government Revenue site; it gives each states revenue from these sources but not the actual rates (see the top of page 6). We do have two states in the IDS, Florida and Texas, which institute no income tax. To further complicate matters, Texas does not have a normal corporate tax, opting instead for a gross margins business tax. We really should standardize the IDS tax code. That thought leads down an interesting road. We are assuming that the states are collecting taxes and sending all of the revenue to us. Does this mean that all State Departments are unfunded? Meaning, in turn, that any services not explicitly legislated by the Southeast Region are not in place? I can't believe that in five years no one has thought to look at the logistics of the region! One little bit of help: If you can provide the GM's Office a list of IDS RL income tax rates (or at least links directly to the states' rates), I can calculate the RL "average" income tax for the region. Whatever tax rates you guys decide is totally up to you, of course. The point for the RL "regional" income tax rate is that whatever it turns out to be produced approximately $35.6 Billion in revenue (as Yelnoc calculated here (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=132028.msg2847905#msg2847905)). So a determination of however much revenue is produced by whatever tax level you ultimately legislate will be made based on the RL regional average producing $35.6 Bil. For example, Yelnoc's proposal is for a 6% income tax rate (presumably a flat rate as it reads? Yes, it wouldn't be the IDS if people didn't think progressive tax rates were icky ;)). If the RL average income tax rate for IDS states is determined to be (e.g.) 3%, then passing a 6% rate would produce roughly twice the revenue as RL: $35.6 Bil x2 = $71.2 Bil. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 28, 2011, 03:15:44 PM I'll keep this page updated with my endeavors in calculating those regional tax rates. My initial thoughts are that tax rates are going to be difficult to come by using that US Government Revenue site; it gives each states revenue from these sources but not the actual rates (see the top of page 6). We do have two states in the IDS, Florida and Texas, which institute no income tax. To further complicate matters, Texas does not have a normal corporate tax, opting instead for a gross margins business tax. We really should standardize the IDS tax code. That thought leads down an interesting road. We are assuming that the states are collecting taxes and sending all of the revenue to us. Does this mean that all State Departments are unfunded? Meaning, in turn, that any services not explicitly legislated by the Southeast Region are not in place? I can't believe that in five years no one has thought to look at the logistics of the region! One little bit of help: If you can provide the GM's Office a list of IDS RL income tax rates (or at least links directly to the states' rates), I can calculate the RL "average" income tax for the region. Whatever tax rates you guys decide is totally up to you, of course. The point for the RL "regional" income tax rate is that whatever it turns out to be produced approximately $35.6 Billion in revenue (as Yelnoc calculated here (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=132028.msg2847905#msg2847905)). So a determination of however much revenue is produced by whatever tax level you ultimately legislate will be made based on the RL regional average producing $35.6 Bil. For example, Yelnoc's proposal is for a 6% income tax rate (presumably a flat rate as it reads? Yes, it wouldn't be the IDS if people didn't think progressive tax rates were icky ;)). If the RL average income tax rate for IDS states is determined to be (e.g.) 3%, then passing a 6% rate would produce roughly twice the revenue as RL: $35.6 Bil x2 = $71.2 Bil. @PiT: Gotcha Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 28, 2011, 03:23:28 PM I have italicized statistics that I got from this Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_tax_levels) because I'm not sure if "tax rate" and "Tax revenue as % of personal income" are interchangeable terms. If they are, I guess that means every state has a flat tax?
Personal Income Tax Rates Alabama: Arkansas: Florida: 0% [Wikipedia] Georgia: Louisiana: Mississippi: North Carolina: South Carolina: Tennessee: 0% [Wikipedia] Texas: 0% [Wikipedia] Corporate Income Tax Rates Alabama: Arkansas: Florida: 5% [Wikipedia] Georgia: Louisiana: Mississippi: North Carolina: South Carolina: Tennessee: 6% tax on income received from stocks and bonds not taxed ad valorem [Wikipedia] Texas: 0% Gross margins tax on businesses (high exception level) [Wikipedia] Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 28, 2011, 04:54:02 PM ~6% is what I estimated Georgia's income tax to be, since we still use their taxation rates unless provided otherwise. Wikipedia has estimated it as 5.62%, so I say that we should use that to estimate the regional income tax rate.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 29, 2011, 08:31:35 PM Am I correct in assuming that "tax rate" and "Tax revenue as % of personal income" are interchangeable terms? If so, we can go ahead and send the Personal Income Taxes off to Badger.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on March 29, 2011, 11:25:41 PM I doubt it, given that actual non-zero figures are attributed to Florida, Tennessee, & Texas in the article.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on March 30, 2011, 07:43:50 AM I doubt it, given that actual non-zero figures are attributed to Florida, Tennessee, & Texas in the article. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on March 30, 2011, 08:25:28 AM I doubt it, given that actual non-zero figures are attributed to Florida, Tennessee, & Texas in the article. For income taxes, probably. Only a minority have either no such tax or a flat tax. However I think a rough estimate can be made by comparing RL income brackets for states with progressive graduated rates. But yes, comparing those states' income brackets is still necessary to avoid "a reasonable estimated comparison" from devolving into a "half-assed guess". As Speaker Yelnoc pointed out, participation/delegation by the entire legislature is a good thing. ;) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 02, 2011, 07:43:25 PM Alabama's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_AL.html):
If your income range is between $0 and $500, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 2%. If your income range is between $501 and $3,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 4%. If your income range is $3,000 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 5%. Arkansas's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_AR.html): If your income range is between $0 and $3,700, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 1%. If your income range is between $3,701 and $7,400, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 2.5%. If your income range is between $7,401 and $11,100, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 3.5%. If your income range is between $11,101 and $18,600, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 4.5%. If your income range is between $18,601 and $31,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 6%. If your income range is $31,000 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 7%. Florida: No Personal Income Tax Georgia's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_ga.html): If your income range is between $0 and $750, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 1%. If your income range is between $751 and $2,250, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 2%. If your income range is between $2,251 and $3,750, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 3%. If your income range is between $3,751 and $5,250, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 4%. If your income range is between $5,251 and $7,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 5%. If your income range is $7,001 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 6%. Louisiana's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_LA.html): If your income range is between $0 and $12,500, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 2%. If your income range is between $12,501 and $50,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 4%. If your income range is $50,001 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 6%. Mississippi's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_MS.html): If your income range is between $0 and $5,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 3%. If your income range is between $5,001 and $10,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 4%. If your income range is $10,001 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 5%. North Carolina's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_NC.html): If your income range is between $0 and $12,750, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 6%. If your income range is between $12,751 and $60,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 7%. If your income range is $60,001 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 7.75%. South Carolina's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_NC.html): If your income range is between $0 and $2,630, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 0%. If your income range is between $2,631 and $5,260, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 3%. If your income range is between $5,261 and $7,890, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 4%. If your income range is between $7,891 and $10,520, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 5%. If your income range is between $10,521 and $13,150, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 6%. If your income range is $13,151 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 7%. Tennessee's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_NC.html): If your income range is $0 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 6%. Texas: No Personal Income Tax Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 02, 2011, 08:14:31 PM Above are all state personal income taxes. Our own legislature also passed the below bill on May 11, 2010. This is the only bill the IDS legislature has passed on the subject of income taxes. Of course, this is corporate income tax rates, so it is not directly pertinent to the above, but it does raise an interesting question. This bill adds a regional tax rate. It does mention state tax rates, yet state tax rates exist. Thus, there are three levels of taxation and thus three levels of government; Federal, Regional, and State ("county" I will presume does not exist since I cannot find references to county tax rates in our laws and am willing to turn a blind eye to rl for the sake of simplicity).
Drawing on the above, does it not make sense for this endeavor to be divided into two categories; Regional and State? Once this project is completed, we can go about the business of integrated the levels, but for now I think this is reason enough to treat them as separate entities. The state level is taken care of easily enough. I can introduce a bill to the legislature showing our findings on the state governments. We have everything we need from Badger's excellent site (other than Puerto Rico, that will need to be rectified). Then we can move on to the process of the regional budget, which is presumably quite small (as this thread is evidence to, we have not passed that many appropriations initiatives/bills) and finalize our regional budget. Quote Put the "free" back in Free Enterprise Bill 1. All non-federal business regulations in the Southeast are hereby repealed. 2. From July 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010 all taxes on corporate income shall be set to 10%. Starting January 1, 2011, the rate at which corporations are taxed shall be set at 8.6% 3. All new businesses in the SE shall not have their income taxed within the first year of starting. In addition, all new businesses in the SE shall have an income tax rate of 5% in their second year of establishment. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 02, 2011, 08:18:12 PM Speak of Puerto Rico,[urlhttp://i2i.nfc.usda.gov/Publications/Tax_Formulas/territorial/tax-pr.html] here[/url] is a little tax formulas thingy that may or may not be of any help.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 02, 2011, 09:08:03 PM The process we derived for calculating our spending & revenue suggests that there is no state-level taxation or spending beyond what the region deals with. Given that the region has specifically avowed the existence of state-level government, this is slightly problematic, though we can imagine the region as being a decidedly unitary system.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 02, 2011, 09:15:37 PM The process we derived for calculating our spending & revenue suggests that there is no state-level taxation or spending beyond what the region deals with. Given that the region has specifically avowed the existence of state-level government, this is slightly problematic, though we can imagine the region as being a decidedly unitary system. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 02, 2011, 10:49:33 PM The process we derived for calculating our spending & revenue suggests that there is no state-level taxation or spending beyond what the region deals with. Given that the region has specifically avowed the existence of state-level government, this is slightly problematic, though we can imagine the region as being a decidedly unitary system. We found our spending by adding together the real-life spending of each state in each category. Unless we assume that all of this money is being spent twice, there's not really much left over for state-level spending. Taxes are accounted for in the same manner, with the numbers being adjusted to reflect regional rates. My thought is that the region gathers the money & releases certain amounts of it to the states, with the current state government apparati being divided in some fashion between the region & the states. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 02, 2011, 11:04:20 PM The process we derived for calculating our spending & revenue suggests that there is no state-level taxation or spending beyond what the region deals with. Given that the region has specifically avowed the existence of state-level government, this is slightly problematic, though we can imagine the region as being a decidedly unitary system. We found our spending by adding together the real-life spending of each state in each category. Unless we assume that all of this money is being spent twice, there's not really much left over for state-level spending. Taxes are accounted for in the same manner, with the numbers being adjusted to reflect regional rates. My thought is that the region gathers the money & releases certain amounts of it to the states, with the current state government apparati being divided in some fashion between the region & the states. Your thought is certainly the way things should be managed but, as far as I can see, that has not been happening. My assumption was that areas not touched upon by the legislature or initiatives function the same as in real life; this seems to be an area that no one in the past has dealt with. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 02, 2011, 11:11:22 PM The process we derived for calculating our spending & revenue suggests that there is no state-level taxation or spending beyond what the region deals with. Given that the region has specifically avowed the existence of state-level government, this is slightly problematic, though we can imagine the region as being a decidedly unitary system. We found our spending by adding together the real-life spending of each state in each category. Unless we assume that all of this money is being spent twice, there's not really much left over for state-level spending. Taxes are accounted for in the same manner, with the numbers being adjusted to reflect regional rates. My thought is that the region gathers the money & releases certain amounts of it to the states, with the current state government apparati being divided in some fashion between the region & the states. Your thought is certainly the way things should be managed but, as far as I can see, that has not been happening. My assumption was that areas not touched upon by the legislature or initiatives function the same as in real life; this seems to be an area that no one in the past has dealt with. As Badger prescribed a few pages back, we are ignoring local-level taxation. As such, my thoughts are that the figures given for regional taxation & spending refers to all that money that passes through the hands of the regional-level government. If we are going to include money on the state-level that the regional government never actually sees, then there is no reason to exclude similar funds on the local-level. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 03, 2011, 02:13:58 PM The process we derived for calculating our spending & revenue suggests that there is no state-level taxation or spending beyond what the region deals with. Given that the region has specifically avowed the existence of state-level government, this is slightly problematic, though we can imagine the region as being a decidedly unitary system. We found our spending by adding together the real-life spending of each state in each category. Unless we assume that all of this money is being spent twice, there's not really much left over for state-level spending. Taxes are accounted for in the same manner, with the numbers being adjusted to reflect regional rates. My thought is that the region gathers the money & releases certain amounts of it to the states, with the current state government apparati being divided in some fashion between the region & the states. Your thought is certainly the way things should be managed but, as far as I can see, that has not been happening. My assumption was that areas not touched upon by the legislature or initiatives function the same as in real life; this seems to be an area that no one in the past has dealt with. As Badger prescribed a few pages back, we are ignoring local-level taxation. As such, my thoughts are that the figures given for regional taxation & spending refers to all that money that passes through the hands of the regional-level government. If we are going to include money on the state-level that the regional government never actually sees, then there is no reason to exclude similar funds on the local-level. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 03, 2011, 05:12:46 PM The process we derived for calculating our spending & revenue suggests that there is no state-level taxation or spending beyond what the region deals with. Given that the region has specifically avowed the existence of state-level government, this is slightly problematic, though we can imagine the region as being a decidedly unitary system. We found our spending by adding together the real-life spending of each state in each category. Unless we assume that all of this money is being spent twice, there's not really much left over for state-level spending. Taxes are accounted for in the same manner, with the numbers being adjusted to reflect regional rates. My thought is that the region gathers the money & releases certain amounts of it to the states, with the current state government apparati being divided in some fashion between the region & the states. Your thought is certainly the way things should be managed but, as far as I can see, that has not been happening. My assumption was that areas not touched upon by the legislature or initiatives function the same as in real life; this seems to be an area that no one in the past has dealt with. As Badger prescribed a few pages back, we are ignoring local-level taxation. As such, my thoughts are that the figures given for regional taxation & spending refers to all that money that passes through the hands of the regional-level government. If we are going to include money on the state-level that the regional government never actually sees, then there is no reason to exclude similar funds on the local-level. But they are already completely linked, unless we want to abandon the base figures altogether and only consider legislation passed by the region as contributing to regional taxation or spending, which would probably generate exorbitant tax levels well beyond the demands of regional spending. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Atlas Has Shrugged on April 03, 2011, 05:34:22 PM Unfortunatly, I am not to familier with the fiscal health of the region as I wish I could be. So I may not have alot of usefull imput on the budget.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 03, 2011, 07:29:33 PM The process we derived for calculating our spending & revenue suggests that there is no state-level taxation or spending beyond what the region deals with. Given that the region has specifically avowed the existence of state-level government, this is slightly problematic, though we can imagine the region as being a decidedly unitary system. We found our spending by adding together the real-life spending of each state in each category. Unless we assume that all of this money is being spent twice, there's not really much left over for state-level spending. Taxes are accounted for in the same manner, with the numbers being adjusted to reflect regional rates. My thought is that the region gathers the money & releases certain amounts of it to the states, with the current state government apparati being divided in some fashion between the region & the states. Your thought is certainly the way things should be managed but, as far as I can see, that has not been happening. My assumption was that areas not touched upon by the legislature or initiatives function the same as in real life; this seems to be an area that no one in the past has dealt with. As Badger prescribed a few pages back, we are ignoring local-level taxation. As such, my thoughts are that the figures given for regional taxation & spending refers to all that money that passes through the hands of the regional-level government. If we are going to include money on the state-level that the regional government never actually sees, then there is no reason to exclude similar funds on the local-level. But they are already completely linked, unless we want to abandon the base figures altogether and only consider legislation passed by the region as contributing to regional taxation or spending, which would probably generate exorbitant tax levels well beyond the demands of regional spending. It's not a pretty picture but, from what I gather of the region's legislative history, it makes the most sense. I am not talking about keeping the two levels permanently separated. After the regional budget is found (we already found the state ones) we will know our region's debt/surplus. From there, we can begin the process of combining the regional and state budgets. It shouldn't be that difficult of a task; it's really just a way of approaching the situation. Unfortunatly, I am not to familier with the fiscal health of the region as I wish I could be. So I may not have alot of usefull imput on the budget. That's ok, I didn't know anything about the budget when we started this either. You learn by doing. If you want to help, we desperately need budgetary figures for Puerto Rico. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 03, 2011, 07:43:53 PM It seems rather disastrous if true in regards to spending, as the region's base spending was taken to be the sum of all state spending, so that seperating it would essentially just mean that every item is being paid for twice. It however does seem very problematic as well in regards to taxation. As such, I think we may actually want to act ASAP in order to eliminate double taxation, because we cannot afford to be taxing our citizens so heavily.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 03, 2011, 07:51:46 PM It seems rather disastrous if true in regards to spending, as the region's base spending was taken to be the sum of all state spending, so that seperating it would essentially just mean that every item is being paid for twice. It however does seem very problematic as well in regards to taxation. As such, I think we may actually want to act ASAP in order to eliminate double taxation, because we cannot afford to be taxing our citizens so heavily. Taxation is certainly a major problem. We will have to pass a massive tax overhaul once we finish with this. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 03, 2011, 07:55:16 PM In the words of the President "Let me be clear."
Two Categories -State Spending/Revenue: Taken from Badger's excellent website, all real data, the "base values" -Regional Spending/Revenue: Everything passed as an initiative or a bill We find the categories of each (State is already done) and present our findings. That means that we will have the budget history of the region up to the present. From there we will combine the two, do the overhauls, and mold the budget into shape. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 03, 2011, 07:57:15 PM It seems rather disastrous if true in regards to spending, as the region's base spending was taken to be the sum of all state spending, so that seperating it would essentially just mean that every item is being paid for twice. It however does seem very problematic as well in regards to taxation. As such, I think we may actually want to act ASAP in order to eliminate double taxation, because we cannot afford to be taxing our citizens so heavily. Taxation is certainly a major problem. We will have to pass a massive tax overhaul once we finish with this. But as I said earlier, we're not looking at taxation & spending by local governments. This is a project for the regional budget; not local budgets or state budgets. If that's the case, we can discard the bases altogether & just look at the rates provided for by the regional statute. Going that way, we should use the Unified Law Code Initiative, take the rates for Georgia, & extrapolate them for the whole region. Given that those are provided for by the regional statute, that would probably be the most rigorous way to do it. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 03, 2011, 08:01:15 PM It seems rather disastrous if true in regards to spending, as the region's base spending was taken to be the sum of all state spending, so that seperating it would essentially just mean that every item is being paid for twice. It however does seem very problematic as well in regards to taxation. As such, I think we may actually want to act ASAP in order to eliminate double taxation, because we cannot afford to be taxing our citizens so heavily. Taxation is certainly a major problem. We will have to pass a massive tax overhaul once we finish with this. But as I said earlier, we're not looking at taxation & spending by local governments. This is a project for the regional budget; not local budgets or state budgets. If that's the case, we can discard the bases altogether & just look at the rates provided for by the regional statute. Going that way, we should use the Unified Law Code Initiative, take the rates for Georgia, & extrapolate them for the whole region. Given that those are provided for by the regional statute, that would probably be the most rigorous way to do it. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 03, 2011, 08:19:39 PM It seems rather disastrous if true in regards to spending, as the region's base spending was taken to be the sum of all state spending, so that seperating it would essentially just mean that every item is being paid for twice. It however does seem very problematic as well in regards to taxation. As such, I think we may actually want to act ASAP in order to eliminate double taxation, because we cannot afford to be taxing our citizens so heavily. Taxation is certainly a major problem. We will have to pass a massive tax overhaul once we finish with this. But as I said earlier, we're not looking at taxation & spending by local governments. This is a project for the regional budget; not local budgets or state budgets. If that's the case, we can discard the bases altogether & just look at the rates provided for by the regional statute. Going that way, we should use the Unified Law Code Initiative, take the rates for Georgia, & extrapolate them for the whole region. Given that those are provided for by the regional statute, that would probably be the most rigorous way to do it. I am not sure that it is desirable to include local figures or even state figures under regional figures. It gives the region much more leeway for future actions to not treat it as a wholly unitary entity. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 03, 2011, 08:55:18 PM It seems rather disastrous if true in regards to spending, as the region's base spending was taken to be the sum of all state spending, so that seperating it would essentially just mean that every item is being paid for twice. It however does seem very problematic as well in regards to taxation. As such, I think we may actually want to act ASAP in order to eliminate double taxation, because we cannot afford to be taxing our citizens so heavily. Taxation is certainly a major problem. We will have to pass a massive tax overhaul once we finish with this. But as I said earlier, we're not looking at taxation & spending by local governments. This is a project for the regional budget; not local budgets or state budgets. If that's the case, we can discard the bases altogether & just look at the rates provided for by the regional statute. Going that way, we should use the Unified Law Code Initiative, take the rates for Georgia, & extrapolate them for the whole region. Given that those are provided for by the regional statute, that would probably be the most rigorous way to do it. I am not sure that it is desirable to include local figures or even state figures under regional figures. It gives the region much more leeway for future actions to not treat it as a wholly unitary entity. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Mr. Taft Republican on April 03, 2011, 09:02:37 PM Puerto Rico puts out about $3.742 billion into the US treasury.
Budget: revenues: $8.1 billion Central Government, $25 Billion with Public Corporations expenditures: $9.6 billion Central Government Personal Tax rates Married couple filing jointly, married person who did not live with his (her) mate, single person, head of family, succession or trust Net taxable income Tax Not exceeding $2,000 7% In excess of $2,000, but not exceeding $17,000 $140 plus 10% of the excess over $2,000 In excess of $17,000, but not exceeding $30,000 $1,640 plus 15% of the excess over $17,000 In excess of $30,000, but not exceeding $50,000 $3,590 plus 28% of the excess over $30,000 In excess of $50,000 $9,190 plus 33% of the excess over $50,000 Married person who lived with his (her) mate, filing separately Net taxable income Tax Not exceeding $1,000 7% In excess of $1,000, but not exceeding $8,500 $70 plus 10% of the excess over $1,000 In excess of $8,500, but not exceeding $15,000 $820 plus 15% of the excess over $8,500 In excess of $15,000, but not exceeding $25,000 $1,795 plus 28% of the excess over $15,000 In excess of $25,000 $4,595 plus 33% of the excess over $25,000 Corporate rates: - 7% maximum corporate income tax rate with some qualified companies paying as little as 2 %. - 2-0 % special corporate tax rate for “Pioneer Industries” http://www.offshorecorporation.com/puerto-rico/ http://www.dollarman.com/puertorico/taxes.html Hope this helped somewhat. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 03, 2011, 10:16:04 PM It seems rather disastrous if true in regards to spending, as the region's base spending was taken to be the sum of all state spending, so that seperating it would essentially just mean that every item is being paid for twice. It however does seem very problematic as well in regards to taxation. As such, I think we may actually want to act ASAP in order to eliminate double taxation, because we cannot afford to be taxing our citizens so heavily. Taxation is certainly a major problem. We will have to pass a massive tax overhaul once we finish with this. But as I said earlier, we're not looking at taxation & spending by local governments. This is a project for the regional budget; not local budgets or state budgets. If that's the case, we can discard the bases altogether & just look at the rates provided for by the regional statute. Going that way, we should use the Unified Law Code Initiative, take the rates for Georgia, & extrapolate them for the whole region. Given that those are provided for by the regional statute, that would probably be the most rigorous way to do it. I am not sure that it is desirable to include local figures or even state figures under regional figures. It gives the region much more leeway for future actions to not treat it as a wholly unitary entity. Aye, my thought is that either way we are going to have to do something pretty soon. I have a couple of ideas for new bills, but I'll wait to post them if we have something more pressing to deal with. Also, many thanks to Viceroy Taft for contributing numbers for Puerto Rico. I am currently busy with schoolwork, but I should be able to help too in the near future. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 03, 2011, 10:45:49 PM :D
i luv u *sloppy wet kiss* It seems rather disastrous if true in regards to spending, as the region's base spending was taken to be the sum of all state spending, so that seperating it would essentially just mean that every item is being paid for twice. It however does seem very problematic as well in regards to taxation. As such, I think we may actually want to act ASAP in order to eliminate double taxation, because we cannot afford to be taxing our citizens so heavily. Taxation is certainly a major problem. We will have to pass a massive tax overhaul once we finish with this. But as I said earlier, we're not looking at taxation & spending by local governments. This is a project for the regional budget; not local budgets or state budgets. If that's the case, we can discard the bases altogether & just look at the rates provided for by the regional statute. Going that way, we should use the Unified Law Code Initiative, take the rates for Georgia, & extrapolate them for the whole region. Given that those are provided for by the regional statute, that would probably be the most rigorous way to do it. I am not sure that it is desirable to include local figures or even state figures under regional figures. It gives the region much more leeway for future actions to not treat it as a wholly unitary entity. Aye, my thought is that either way we are going to have to do something pretty soon. I have a couple of ideas for new bills, but I'll wait to post them if we have something more pressing to deal with. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on April 04, 2011, 09:51:25 AM In the words of the President "Let me be clear." Two Categories -State Spending/Revenue: Taken from Badger's excellent website, all real data, the "base values" -Regional Spending/Revenue: Everything passed as an initiative or a bill We find the categories of each (State is already done) and present our findings. That means that we will have the budget history of the region up to the present. From there we will combine the two, do the overhauls, and mold the budget into shape. I think Yelnoc's got it here, though Emperor PiT is absolutely right about just leaving local spending off the ledgers. As regions are the Atlasian equivalent of states in RL, the spending and taxing by local municipalities doesn't affect the regional budget. Local governments are separate entities from regions in Atlasia and states in RL, so the IDS regional government can't control those decisions. (Okay, technically the region could pass laws limiting local governments' ability to levy taxes, but lets get a firm grip on the IDS Regional Budget before we start worrying about local municipal budgets. ;)) The level of adherence to regional legislative history (i.e. prior laws passed regarding taxing and spending) is totally up to you guys. Just know that you guys do have the option here of essentially "reboot", either partial or total, for budgeting purposes. Also know the GM's Office determined the IDS has a rainy day fund of $25 Bil; that's all you need to worry about for now regarding prior debt or deficits. @ Taft: Nice job finding info on PR! @ Yelnoc: Thanks for the RL state income tax data. :D I'll try getting to an analysis soon to construct an "average" RL regional income tax rate. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 06, 2011, 08:29:39 PM 2011 Budget Regional Spending Pensions-Base: $0 Health care: -Base: $0 Education: -Base: $0 -Tertiary Education/Other Capital Outlay-Higher Education/Southeastern Educational Incentive Act: $3.5 billion -Pre-Primary through Secondary Education/Other Capital Outlay - Elementary and Secondary Education/School Choice Initiative: $56.4 billion -Total: $59.9 billion Defense: -Base: $0 Welfare: -Base: $0 Protection: -Base: $0 Transportation: -Base: $0 General government: -Base: $0 Other spending: -Base: $0 -Cultural Services/Pentagram Creation Act: $200 million (1 time expense) -Total: 200 million Interest: -Base: $? Balance: -Base: -$? Σ: -Base: $0 -Total: 61.1 billion Regional Revenue Income Taxes: -Base: $0 -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Put the "free" back in Free Enterprise Bill: 32.5 billion -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: -66.1 million (-0.0661 billion) -Corporate Tax Rate: 8.6% (part of Free Enterprise Bill above - remember other provisions). -Personal Income Tax Rate: 0% (none) -Total: $32.4339 billion ($32,433,900,000) Social Security Taxes: -Base: $0 Ad-valorem Taxes: -Base: $0 -Excise Taxes/Tax-Alcoholic Beverage Sales/Southeast Alcohol Initiative, Section 8: $1.3127 billion ($1.00/proof liter or $0.385/gallon for beer, $0.909/gallon for wine, $3.31/gallon for spirits) -Excise Taxes/Tax-Tobacco Products Sales/Southeast Tobacco Initiative, Section 6: $0.04/cigarette ($6,034,000,000/year), $0.08/cigar (?), $2.00/kg tobacco(?) -Excise Taxes/Tax-Marijuana Products Sales: $3.00/ounce -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: 80% of standard electricity excise tax -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Biomass Initiative, Section 3: 80% of standard electricity excise tax -Property Taxes/Tax-Property/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4 -Transportation/Tax-Motor Fuel Sales/Transportation Commission Initiative, Chapter 3, Section 22: $0.08/liter -Transportation/Tax-Motor Vehicle License/Fair Consequences Initiative, Section 3 -License/Tax-Other License/Off-Shore Religious Organizations Initiative, Section 2 -Total: ? Fees and Charges: -Base: $0 -Other/Charges-All Other/Pentagram Creation Act: $5,700,000/year -Other/Charges-All Other/Safe Roads Initiative, Section 6: $44,400,000/year -Total: $50,100,000 ($0.501 billion) Business and Other Revenue: -Base: $0 -Other/Miscellaneous-Net Lottery Revenue/Southeast Lottery Regulations, Section 6 (Amended by Expanding Choice Initiative) -Total: ? Total Direct Revenue: -base: $0 Gross Public Debt: -Base: $0 State Spending Pensions-Base: $3.81 billion Health care: -Base: $121.9 billion Education: -Base: $0 billion (pre-Educational Hotfix Act) -Base: $48.9 billion (post-Educational Hotfix Act - original figure was $73.4 billion) -Total: $48.9 billion Defense: -Base: $0.6 billion Welfare: -Base: $40.4 billion Protection: -Base: $21.5 billion Transportation: -Base: $28.2 billion General government: -Base: $7.4 billion Other spending: -Base: $18.7 billion Interest: -Base: $7.4 billion Balance: -Base: -$4.4 billion Σ: -Base: $352.1 billion State Revenue Income Taxes: -Base: $35.6 billion -Corporate Tax Rate: ? -Personal Income Tax Rate: ? -Total: ? Social Security Taxes: -Base: $15.1 billion Ad-valorem Taxes: -Base: $252.3 billion Fees and Charges: -Base: $107 billion Business and Other Revenue: -Base: $132.5 billion Total Direct Revenue: -base: $544.5 billion Gross Public Debt: -Base: $598.7 billion Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 06, 2011, 08:33:25 PM I am 99.9% sure that the above is correct but you might want to go over it anyway. We need to figure out the cost of the Pentagram Creation Act and the revenues from the various excise taxes, fees, and the lottery initiative. Once Badger gets back to us we will have the corporate tax rate for the states. As far as the 6% personal income tax rate goes, is that based off of the states? I don't think we passed a low concerning personal income taxes but I may be wrong. In any event, there is the Regional government exposed.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 06, 2011, 09:23:24 PM I don't think it's possible to assign any sort of price tag to the Pentagram Creation Act. The act specifies that the pentagram will be several stories in height, which doesn't give us much to work with. Not to mention we'd also have to talk about revenue due to the PCA, since the pentagram is intended to serve as a tourist destination.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 07, 2011, 08:38:33 AM I don't think it's possible to assign any sort of price tag to the Pentagram Creation Act. The act specifies that the pentagram will be several stories in height, which doesn't give us much to work with. Not to mention we'd also have to talk about revenue due to the PCA, since the pentagram is intended to serve as a tourist destination. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 07, 2011, 12:17:20 PM I don't think it's possible to assign any sort of price tag to the Pentagram Creation Act. The act specifies that the pentagram will be several stories in height, which doesn't give us much to work with. Not to mention we'd also have to talk about revenue due to the PCA, since the pentagram is intended to serve as a tourist destination. Pretty much. The Transamerica Pyramid was built from 1969-1972 & cost $32 million. Assuming we want a landmark of similar importance & adjusting for inflation, let's say the Imperial Pentagram costs $200 million. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 07, 2011, 12:26:08 PM I don't think it's possible to assign any sort of price tag to the Pentagram Creation Act. The act specifies that the pentagram will be several stories in height, which doesn't give us much to work with. Not to mention we'd also have to talk about revenue due to the PCA, since the pentagram is intended to serve as a tourist destination. Pretty much. The Transamerica Pyramid was built from 1969-1972 & cost $32 million. Assuming we want a landmark of similar importance & adjusting for inflation, let's say the Imperial Pentagram costs $200 million. EDIT: I included the figure. The region has spent 61.1 billion this year but presumably spent a lot more. Hmm... Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 07, 2011, 12:29:25 PM You know, we are going to have to codify how we do this budget thing in the future. I am thinking at the beginning of every year we present a new budget including all of last years appropriations. Otherwise this will be a mess to keep a handle on.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 07, 2011, 12:48:08 PM I don't think it's possible to assign any sort of price tag to the Pentagram Creation Act. The act specifies that the pentagram will be several stories in height, which doesn't give us much to work with. Not to mention we'd also have to talk about revenue due to the PCA, since the pentagram is intended to serve as a tourist destination. Pretty much. The Transamerica Pyramid was built from 1969-1972 & cost $32 million. Assuming we want a landmark of similar importance & adjusting for inflation, let's say the Imperial Pentagram costs $200 million. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Memphis,_Tennessee), Graceland, Memphis's biggest attraction, sees 600,000 tourists a year. The Pentagram is too new to really be a magnet by itself, but assuming they pay an average of $10/person to go inside (ticket prices would probably be a bit higher & the real number of tourists is probably somewhat higher, but also some tourists would probably not go to the Pentagram), that figures to $6,000,000/year. Since we are obviously not close to recouping the total costs, we'll be getting $5,700,000/year from it. As for the Safe Roads Initiative, the Department of Transportation (http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_17.html) says that 44.4 million new & used cars were sold in the U.S. in 2009. Though it was part of a significant downward trend, we'll simplify things by assuming things have remained static since then. Conveniently, dividing by five to find the number of those cars in the region cancels out multiplying by five to account for the amount of the fee, so the Safe Roads Initiative just brings in $44,400,000/year. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 07, 2011, 12:50:04 PM You know, we are going to have to codify how we do this budget thing in the future. I am thinking at the beginning of every year we present a new budget including all of last years appropriations. Otherwise this will be a mess to keep a handle on. I'm thinking I might keep a running tally on all new taxes & appropriations passed. If nothing else, it gives us a reason to be specific with money totals. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on April 07, 2011, 02:50:00 PM You know, we are going to have to codify how we do this budget thing in the future. I am thinking at the beginning of every year we present a new budget including all of last years appropriations. Otherwise this will be a mess to keep a handle on. I'm thinking I might keep a running tally on all new taxes & appropriations passed. If nothing else, it gives us a reason to be specific with money totals. Excellant idea. Ideally, that's what a regional budget should be. After the hard part of establishing a first time budget structure and numbers, it could simply be an ongoing tally sheet based on legislation passed (and maybe events from the GM ;)). You only have to do the actual formal annual (orr quarterly "budget or shutdown" resolution like we're seeing in Washington if you really want to (and are masochists :P). BTW: If I don't post an analysis of the region's income tax revenue by Monday, I hereby authorize--even encourage--the IDS to remind/nag me then. :) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee on April 07, 2011, 05:14:42 PM Great job! Also, a $200 billion surplus seems a little too good to be true. :P Under that plan, the IDS would be down to $90 billion in moderator credit; $0 would be reached in December 2011. EDIT: Actually, it will take a tad more that $200 billion to create a $200 billion surplus (duh!). Instead of subtracting a $10 billion a month, we should subtract 5% of that original number. If it's ok with you PiT, I will PM Badger about this. Also, looking at the bills and initiatives that need to be integrated into our budget, I think we will need to add all of the subheadings. :( Hmmmmm. I'll have to think about this. Actually many states do have a rainy day fund. And while $200 billion may seem a lot, spread out over 10 southern states (including TX and FL)? Maybe not that farfetched. Anyone have an idea (or willing to check) what the southern states RL rainy day fund (or equivalent) status is like? Looking at the underlying data (http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/content/data/rainydayfunds.xls) for that graph, it appears Georgia's rainy day fund was only at 5.3% of its annual expenditures. Most other IDS states varied from Arkansas (zilch) to Texas (10.2%). I have studiously determined that the $200 Billion surplus appears, sadly, to have primarily resulted from accounting errors and overestimation of future receipts which were heavily decimated by the recession. There's also mysterious withdrawls to a Cayman Islands account simply listed under "NCYnk". ;D Even 10% I'm afraid is not realistic when only Texas meets that level in RL. That said, based on TX having a hugely disproportionate share of regional revenues, some other states being in the 5-10% range, plus a bonus for Yelnoc finding this website and doing preliminary calculations (that's always looked upon favorably by the GM's Office ;)), I'll put the IDS Rainy Day Fund balance at exactly (coincidentally) $25 Bil (or nearly 8% of annual expenditures). If anyone thinks my numbers are off or unfair in someway, though, I'm always ready to listen. I don't have access to any Regional level cash and never have. So even if it was me, it would have had to come through one of you guy's. :P Either a really stupid ID thief or a brilliant political hack/CYA setup is what has happened here. Speaking of the Caymen Islands, I have made a business of tracking the accounts of Senators especially involving known tax shelters and money laundering operations. Lets just say that a "certain former Senator" wasn't exactly being Mr. Clean in the spring of 2010. :P Sounds convenient that this would turn up. ;) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 09, 2011, 11:05:03 AM I don't think it's possible to assign any sort of price tag to the Pentagram Creation Act. The act specifies that the pentagram will be several stories in height, which doesn't give us much to work with. Not to mention we'd also have to talk about revenue due to the PCA, since the pentagram is intended to serve as a tourist destination. Pretty much. The Transamerica Pyramid was built from 1969-1972 & cost $32 million. Assuming we want a landmark of similar importance & adjusting for inflation, let's say the Imperial Pentagram costs $200 million. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Memphis,_Tennessee), Graceland, Memphis's biggest attraction, sees 600,000 tourists a year. The Pentagram is too new to really be a magnet by itself, but assuming they pay an average of $10/person to go inside (ticket prices would probably be a bit higher & the real number of tourists is probably somewhat higher, but also some tourists would probably not go to the Pentagram), that figures to $6,000,000/year. Since we are obviously not close to recouping the total costs, we'll be getting $5,700,000/year from it. As for the Safe Roads Initiative, the Department of Transportation (http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_17.html) says that 44.4 million new & used cars were sold in the U.S. in 2009. Though it was part of a significant downward trend, we'll simplify things by assuming things have remained static since then. Conveniently, dividing by five to find the number of those cars in the region cancels out multiplying by five to account for the amount of the fee, so the Safe Roads Initiative just brings in $44,400,000/year. 1) Income Taxes: Derive Revenue figures from the following bills: Quote Put the "free" back in Free Enterprise Bill 1. All non-federal business regulations in the Southeast are hereby repealed. 2. From July 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010 all taxes on corporate income shall be set to 10%. Starting January 1, 2011, the rate at which corporations are taxed shall be set at 8.6% 3. All new businesses in the SE shall not have their income taxed within the first year of starting. In addition, all new businesses in the SE shall have an income tax rate of 5% in their second year of establishment. Quote Section 32 - Income Taxes A deduction of 10% of the gross income from the sale of electrical power produced by an approved nuclear plant shall be made to determine the net income of the producer for the purposes of income taxes imposed by the Southeast Region or any of its subsidiary governments. 2) Ad-Valorum Taxes: Derive Revenue figures from the following acts: Quote -Excise Taxes/Tax-Alcoholic Beverage Sales/Southeast Alcohol Initiative, Section 8: $1.00/proof liter -Excise Taxes/Tax-Tobacco Products Sales/Southeast Tobacco Initiative, Section 6: $0.04/cigarette, $0.08/cigar, $2.00/kg tobacco -Excise Taxes/Tax-Marijuana Products Sales: $3.00/ounce -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: 80% of standard electricity excise tax -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Biomass Initiative, Section 3: 80% of standard electricity excise tax -Property Taxes/Tax-Property/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4 -Transportation/Tax-Motor Fuel Sales/Transportation Commission Initiative, Chapter 3, Section 22: $0.08/liter -Transportation/Tax-Motor Vehicle License/Fair Consequences Initiative, Section 3 -License/Tax-Other License/Off-Shore Religious Organizations Initiative, Section 2 Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 09, 2011, 11:11:01 AM I will start with this bill.
Section 1 seems to indicate that, when we combine the state and regional budgets, all state revenue derived from Corporate income taxes should be dropped, presumably replaced by the revenue from this bill. The first provision of section 2 can be ignored since we are simply looking for 2011's budget. That means we have a corporate tax rate of 8.6%. Now, how do we determine how much money a corporate tax rate of 8.6% raises? This is complicated by Section three, which exempts businesses in their first year from taxation and lowers the business tax to five percent for their second year. Any thoughts? Quote Put the "free" back in Free Enterprise Bill 1. All non-federal business regulations in the Southeast are hereby repealed. 2. From July 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010 all taxes on corporate income shall be set to 10%. Starting January 1, 2011, the rate at which corporations are taxed shall be set at 8.6% 3. All new businesses in the SE shall not have their income taxed within the first year of starting. In addition, all new businesses in the SE shall have an income tax rate of 5% in their second year of establishment. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 09, 2011, 07:31:12 PM I had difficulty finding much on corporate incomes, though this article by the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/23/corporate-profits-q3-2010-_n_787573.html) suggests a national corporate profit rate of $1.66 trillion/year. Dividing by five, that gives us $332 billion/year in the IDS. Since new businesses obviously don't pull in all that much, I'll simplify things by ignoring their reduced corporate taxes & multiply that figure by 0.098, which gives us a total revenue rate of $32,500,000,000/year. I'm going to assume that our lowish rate combined with a lack of loopholes provided for by the Put the "free" back in Free Enterprise Bill means that we see minimal tax avoidance, unlike our federal counterparts. ;D
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 09, 2011, 08:02:29 PM I had difficulty finding much on corporate incomes, though this article by the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/23/corporate-profits-q3-2010-_n_787573.html) suggests a national corporate profit rate of $1.66 trillion/year. Dividing by five, that gives us $332 billion/year in the IDS. Since new businesses obviously don't pull in all that much, I'll simplify things by ignoring their reduced corporate taxes & multiply that figure by 0.098, which gives us a total revenue rate of $32,500,000,000/year. I'm going to assume that our lowish rate combined with a lack of loopholes provided for by the Put the "free" back in Free Enterprise Bill means that we see minimal tax avoidance, unlike our federal counterparts. ;D Now we have this section of the Nuclear Initiative. Quote Section 32 - Income Taxes A deduction of 10% of the gross income from the sale of electrical power produced by an approved nuclear plant shall be made to determine the net income of the producer for the purposes of income taxes imposed by the Southeast Region or any of its subsidiary governments. The first order of the day is figuring out how many nuclear plants there are in the southeast. This (http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/nukelist1.htm) site is helpful. Alabama: 7 units Arkansas: 2 units Georgia: 4 units Louisiana: 2 units Mississippi: 1 unit South Carolina: 7 units North Carolina: 5 units Puerto Rico: 0 units Tennessee: 3 units (that are built or at least that information is provided about) Texas: 4 units Total: 35 units Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 09, 2011, 09:57:06 PM According to the Department of Energy (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epaxlfilees1.pdf), nuclear plants were responsible for the production of 800 billion kWh of energy in 2009. There are currently 104 active reactors in the United States, so multiplying by (35/104) gives us 270 billion kWh produced in the region.
The Nuclear Energy Institute site (http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/costs/) provides average costs. Adding up the average costs of fuel, operations, & maintenance gives us a cost of $0.0203/kWh. Rounding up to $0.025/kWh, since they obviously will have to sell for a gain, we get a total revenue of $6.75 billion for sales of electricity produced by the regional nuclear plants. The results of this provision is essentially a cut into the corporate income tax rate, so we find the amount of this cut by multiplying by the corporate tax rate & the percentage cut provided for by the bill, giving us $66,100,000/year. Please note that this is a decrease to the revenue of the region, as we are providing for a tax break for these plants. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 10, 2011, 10:26:38 AM According to the Department of Energy (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epaxlfilees1.pdf), nuclear plants were responsible for the production of 800 billion kWh of energy in 2009. There are currently 104 active reactors in the United States, so multiplying by (35/104) gives us 270 billion kWh produced in the region. The Nuclear Energy Institute site (http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/costs/) provides average costs. Adding up the average costs of fuel, operations, & maintenance gives us a cost of $0.0203/kWh. Rounding up to $0.025/kWh, since they obviously will have to sell for a gain, we get a total revenue of $6.75 billion for sales of electricity produced by the regional nuclear plants. The results of this provision is essentially a cut into the corporate income tax rate, so we find the amount of this cut by multiplying by the corporate tax rate & the percentage cut provided for by the bill, giving us $66,100,000/year. Please note that this is a decrease to the revenue of the region, as we are providing for a tax break for these plants. Quote -Excise Taxes/Tax-Alcoholic Beverage Sales/Southeast Alcohol Initiative, Section 8: $1.00/proof liter -Excise Taxes/Tax-Tobacco Products Sales/Southeast Tobacco Initiative, Section 6: $0.04/cigarette, $0.08/cigar, $2.00/kg tobacco -Excise Taxes/Tax-Marijuana Products Sales: $3.00/ounce -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: 80% of standard electricity excise tax -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Biomass Initiative, Section 3: 80% of standard electricity excise tax -Property Taxes/Tax-Property/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4 -Transportation/Tax-Motor Fuel Sales/Transportation Commission Initiative, Chapter 3, Section 22: $0.08/liter -Transportation/Tax-Motor Vehicle License/Fair Consequences Initiative, Section 3 -License/Tax-Other License/Off-Shore Religious Organizations Initiative, Section 2 Let's start with the sin taxes. The main obstacle here is determining consumption rates. I'll go trawl around the internet for alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana data now. EDIT: According to this map (http://www.who.int/tobacco/en/atlas8.pdf), the USA in 1998 (or more recent, it doesn't say) consumed between 1,500-2,499 cigarettes per person for a total of 451 billion cigarettes in 1998. DOUBLE EDIT: Found this (http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=399) excellent site for revenue from alcohol excise taxes and this (http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/245.html) one for state tax rates. Unfortunately our tax is per liter while those are per gallon and ours is on all alcohol while theirs is broken up into spirits, table wine, and beer categories. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 10, 2011, 02:58:14 PM Beer is typically 10-proof & wine 24-proof, to my knowledge. As a proof-liter is the amount of the alcohol that would constitute one liter were it at 100-proof, one proof-liter of beer & wine would be equivalent to 2.6 gallons & 1.1 gallons respectively. That gives us rates of $0.385/gallon for beer & $0.909/gallon for wine.
According to this site (http://www.alcoholcontents.com/Liquor/liquor.htm), spirits are typically 70-120 proof. Obviously weaker spirits will be preferred over stronger ones, so 80 proof seems like a decent enough guess, especially since it works with the proportions I've heard for alcohol content in beer, wine, & spirits. As such, 1 proof liter of spirits would be equivalent to 1.25 liters on average, or 0.325 gallons. That gives us a tax rate of $3.31/gallon for spirits. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 10, 2011, 09:15:11 PM Added those figures. Now for actual revenue. Nebraska seems to be the closest to us as far as those tax rates go. In 2008, made $26,254,000 off all three alcohol taxes. Nebraska's population is 1,796,619 to our 80,882,282. That rounds to about 0.02%, suggesting that the IDS's revenue from alcohol sales is in the area of $1,312,700,000 per year, assuming my calculations are correct.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 14, 2011, 02:11:58 PM I guess I did the alcohol revenue was ok. I will do the same for tobacco.
Quote -Excise Taxes/Tax-Tobacco Products Sales/Southeast Tobacco Initiative, Section 6: $0.04/cigarette, $0.08/cigar, $2.00/kg tobacco This is just for the cigarette tax; I'm not sure how we will find Cigar and Tobacco revenues. Now, no state in the union has a tax as low as the IDS's piddly 4 cents. What I had to do was take North Dakota's $0.44 rate, divide by 11 (and thus divide its revenue of 24,127,000 by 11=2,193,363). Then I divided their population like ours (646,844/80,882,282=.008%). So, if my calculations are correct, the IDS's revenue from cigarettes alone is $274,261,189 or about .000274 billion. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 14, 2011, 04:15:59 PM That looks right, though it should be 0.274 billion. This isn't the UK. :P
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 14, 2011, 04:20:46 PM That looks right, though it should be 0.274 billion. This isn't the UK. :P Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Brandon H on April 14, 2011, 11:43:59 PM Pentagram Creation Act? Was that really the best way to spend $200 M?
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 15, 2011, 05:11:45 AM Pentagram Creation Act? Was that really the best way to spend $200 M? The idea is to create a tourist attraction to simultaneously boost the regional economy & bring in revenue. I expect that the revenue from that will increase as time goes on & its notoriety increases. Might want to work to speed up the process. ;) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 15, 2011, 07:41:10 AM Pentagram Creation Act? Was that really the best way to spend $200 M? In the meantime, AG, do you want to help us? We need revenue from cigar and tobacco tax, two things that I wasn'ta ble to find when calculating the cigarette revenue. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 15, 2011, 08:30:03 AM I just realized that our rate is per-cigarette while the rates you were looking at were per-pack. A pack contains 20 cigarettes (I think), so our tax rate is actually $0.88/pack. Running the computation again with that, I get $6,034,000,000/year for revenue from cigarette taxes.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 15, 2011, 01:45:37 PM I just realized that our rate is per-cigarette while the rates you were looking at were per-pack. A pack contains 20 cigarettes (I think), so our tax rate is actually $0.88/pack. Running the computation again with that, I get $6,034,000,000/year for revenue from cigarette taxes. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 15, 2011, 01:47:00 PM 2011 Budget Regional Spending Pensions-Base: $0 Health care: -Base: $0 Education: -Base: $0 -Tertiary Education/Other Capital Outlay-Higher Education/Southeastern Educational Incentive Act: $3.5 billion -Pre-Primary through Secondary Education/Other Capital Outlay - Elementary and Secondary Education/School Choice Initiative: $56.4 billion -Total: $59.9 billion Defense: -Base: $0 Welfare: -Base: $0 Protection: -Base: $0 Transportation: -Base: $0 General government: -Base: $0 Other spending: -Base: $0 -Cultural Services/Pentagram Creation Act: $200 million (1 time expense) -Total: 200 million Interest: -Base: $? Balance: -Base: -$? Σ: -Base: $0 -Total: 61.1 billion Regional Revenue Income Taxes: -Base: $0 -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Put the "free" back in Free Enterprise Bill: 32.5 billion -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: -66.1 million (-0.0661 billion) -Corporate Tax Rate: 8.6% (part of Free Enterprise Bill above - remember other provisions). -Personal Income Tax Rate: 0% (none) -Total: $32.4339 billion ($32,433,900,000) Social Security Taxes: -Base: $0 Ad-valorem Taxes: -Base: $0 -Excise Taxes/Tax-Alcoholic Beverage Sales/Southeast Alcohol Initiative, Section 8: $1.3127 billion ($1.00/proof liter or $0.385/gallon for beer, $0.909/gallon for wine, $3.31/gallon for spirits) -Excise Taxes/Tax-Tobacco Products Sales/Southeast Tobacco Initiative, Section 6: $0.04/cigarette ($6,034,000,000/year), $0.08/cigar ($80,000,000/year), $2.00/kg tobacco ($24,000,000/year) -Excise Taxes/Tax-Marijuana Products Sales: $3.00/ounce ($48,000,000/year) -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: 80% of standard electricity excise tax: $0 -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Biomass Initiative, Section 3: 80% of standard electricity excise tax: $0 -Property Taxes/Tax-Property/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4 -Transportation/Tax-Motor Fuel Sales/Transportation Commission Initiative, Chapter 3, Section 22: $0.08/liter -Transportation/Tax-Motor Vehicle License/Fair Consequences Initiative, Section 3 -License/Tax-Other License/Off-Shore Religious Organizations Initiative, Section 2 -Total: ? Fees and Charges: -Base: $0 -Other/Charges-All Other/Pentagram Creation Act: $5,700,000/year -Other/Charges-All Other/Safe Roads Initiative, Section 6: $44,400,000/year -Total: $50,100,000 ($0.0501 billion) Business and Other Revenue: -Base: $0 -Other/Miscellaneous-Net Lottery Revenue/Southeast Lottery Regulations, Section 6 (Amended by Expanding Choice Initiative) -Total: ? Total Direct Revenue: -base: $0 Gross Public Debt: -Base: $0 State Spending Pensions-Base: $3.81 billion Health care: -Base: $121.9 billion Education: -Base: $0 billion (pre-Educational Hotfix Act) -Base: $48.9 billion (post-Educational Hotfix Act - original figure was $73.4 billion) -Total: $48.9 billion Defense: -Base: $0.6 billion Welfare: -Base: $40.4 billion Protection: -Base: $21.5 billion Transportation: -Base: $28.2 billion General government: -Base: $7.4 billion Other spending: -Base: $18.7 billion Interest: -Base: $7.4 billion Balance: -Base: -$4.4 billion Σ: -Base: $352.1 billion State Revenue Income Taxes: -Base: $35.6 billion -Corporate Tax Rate: ? -Personal Income Tax Rate: ? -Total: ? Social Security Taxes: -Base: $15.1 billion Ad-valorem Taxes: -Base: $252.3 billion Fees and Charges: -Base: $107 billion Business and Other Revenue: -Base: $132.5 billion Total Direct Revenue: -base: $544.5 billion Gross Public Debt: -Base: $598.7 billion Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 15, 2011, 05:21:10 PM The fees & charges total is actually $0.0501 billion.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 15, 2011, 07:31:00 PM The fees & charges total is actually $0.0501 billion. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 15, 2011, 08:25:05 PM The fees & charges total is actually $0.0501 billion. Happy to be of service. Conversion errors are always easy to make. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 17, 2011, 04:23:16 PM According to this report (http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/food/cigars), more than 5 billion cigars were consumed nationwide in 2006. If we assume ~1 billion for the IDS, at $0.08/cigar, that gives us cigar tax revenue of roughly $80,000,000/year.
No precise numbers are given for later years, though according to the article a bill passed by Congress IRL in 2009 vastly increased the national cigar tax, which has dealt a severe blow to the cigar industry. No such bill was passed in Atlasia, so the most recent figures would actually not be that accurate for our purposes. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 17, 2011, 04:56:54 PM According to this report (http://business.highbeam.com/industry-reports/food/cigars), more than 5 billion cigars were consumed nationwide in 2006. If we assume ~1 billion for the IDS, at $0.08/cigar, that gives us cigar tax revenue of roughly $80,000,000/year. No precise numbers are given for later years, though according to the article a bill passed by Congress IRL in 2009 vastly increased the national cigar tax, which has dealt a severe blow to the cigar industry. No such bill was passed in Atlasia, so the most recent figures would actually not be that accurate for our purposes. Now, onto Marijuana revenues. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 17, 2011, 05:11:48 PM Thanks for finding that. I was looking for that data, but without much success. "Loose tobacco" doesn't appear to be a term that sees much use, so we probably won't find anything better for it.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 17, 2011, 05:43:05 PM I found this site (http://www.canorml.org/background/CA_legalization2.html) estimating the revenue that would be raised from legalizing & taxing marijuana. Granted the organization behind it is obviously very much biased towards doing such a thing, though it's better than nothing.
The IDS has roughly twice the population of California, but a much lower proportion of marijuana-users for obvious reasons. For simplicity's sake I'll assume they have roughly the same amount of marijuana use in absolute numbers. Now the site gives $770-900 million as an estimate for the yearly revenue of a $50/ounce tax on marijuana. As I said, they are rather bullish for this sort of thing, so I'll err on the low end at $800 million. The regional tax is $3/ounce, which gives us $48,000,000/year. I know that our tax is much lower than what they suggest, but I don't think a $50/ounce tax could actually work. I read on another site (forget what it is, though I could look for it) that the average street price of marijuana is ~$220/ounce, with the lowest-grade versions costing ~$90/ounce. Well, how many legal substances can you think of that are that expensive, other than precious metals like gold? Black market prices are inevitably higher than regular market prices due to the high demand relative to supply that fuels them along with the danger inherent to them. If marijuana is legalized, then the price of it should drop to a more reasonable figure. I'm not sure what that figure would be, though $3/ounce seems like a good guess for a tax to assign to that figure. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 17, 2011, 05:43:16 PM I don't know how we are going to find revenue figures for Mary Jane. There are no real-life US examples we can base it off of. Did the initiative in question simply decriminalize it or did it make all aspects of Cannabis (possession, sale, transportation, and cultivation) legal?
EDIT: That's reasonable, added. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 18, 2011, 02:03:29 PM Now on to the Nuclear Initiative Part II. I think you might have posted the standard electricity excise tax in the beginning of the thread; I will have to go look.
-Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: 80% of standard electricity excise tax EDIT: Looks like we don't save a standard electricity excise tax :( Should we pass something in the legislature to retcon this? Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 18, 2011, 04:52:21 PM Don't have time to look right now, but per the Unified Law Code Initiative our electricity excise tax should be the same as it is over in Georgia. If it turns out there is none there, then we can either make one or just leave it stand at $0.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 18, 2011, 07:11:28 PM Don't have time to look right now, but per the Unified Law Code Initiative our electricity excise tax should be the same as it is over in Georgia. If it turns out there is none there, then we can either make one or just leave it stand at $0. Quote Electricity interacting directly with a manufactured product is exempt if the total cost of the electricity is more than half the cost of all materials used (including electricity) in making the product. I say we just assume that the electric excise tax is 0% for simplicity and void related initiatives. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on April 19, 2011, 03:12:18 PM Alabama's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_AL.html): If your income range is between $0 and $500, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 2%. If your income range is between $501 and $3,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 4%. If your income range is $3,000 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 5%. Arkansas's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_AR.html): If your income range is between $0 and $3,700, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 1%. If your income range is between $3,701 and $7,400, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 2.5%. If your income range is between $7,401 and $11,100, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 3.5%. If your income range is between $11,101 and $18,600, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 4.5%. If your income range is between $18,601 and $31,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 6%. If your income range is $31,000 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 7%. Florida: No Personal Income Tax Georgia's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_ga.html): If your income range is between $0 and $750, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 1%. If your income range is between $751 and $2,250, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 2%. If your income range is between $2,251 and $3,750, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 3%. If your income range is between $3,751 and $5,250, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 4%. If your income range is between $5,251 and $7,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 5%. If your income range is $7,001 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 6%. Louisiana's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_LA.html): If your income range is between $0 and $12,500, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 2%. If your income range is between $12,501 and $50,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 4%. If your income range is $50,001 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 6%. Mississippi's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_MS.html): If your income range is between $0 and $5,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 3%. If your income range is between $5,001 and $10,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 4%. If your income range is $10,001 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 5%. North Carolina's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_NC.html): If your income range is between $0 and $12,750, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 6%. If your income range is between $12,751 and $60,000, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 7%. If your income range is $60,001 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 7.75%. South Carolina's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_NC.html): If your income range is between $0 and $2,630, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 0%. If your income range is between $2,631 and $5,260, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 3%. If your income range is between $5,261 and $7,890, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 4%. If your income range is between $7,891 and $10,520, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 5%. If your income range is between $10,521 and $13,150, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 6%. If your income range is $13,151 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 7%. Tennessee's (Personal) Income tax Rates (http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_NC.html): If your income range is $0 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 6%. Texas: No Personal Income Tax The GM Office's analysis of the IDS income tax rates compared to RL, and according revenue produced is as follows: I roughly calculated the RL income tax rate in IDS states to equal approximately a 3.35% flat rate. This was done by estimating the "average" overall tax rate of those states with graduated rates, then averaging each state by population weight. Needless to say, Texas and FL having no income tax rate and about half the region's population greatly dragged down the average. Accordingly, by calculating the RL income tax rates as producing $35.6 Billion, I've similarly calculated that the proposed (or current?) IDS flat tax rate of 6% would produce $63.75 Bil. This should help somewhat with budgeting, eh? :) Two important points: First please note that the website we've been using (a real tea party fest there if anyone wishes to accuse me of allowing my own views to color the numbers :P) states that $35.6 Billion is for both personal and corporate income tax. Please advise ASAP if the IDS corporate income tax rate is substantially different than the personal rate. If so, I'm afraid I may need help in figuring out the RL corporate rates as Yelnoc did before with individual rates in order to estimate corporate revenue. :( Otherwise, I'm willing to assume a regional flat 6% rate on corporate income too, and happily willing to also assume the windfall described is applicable here. ;) Secondly, I've lost track a bit with the discussion. Please advise ASAP if there is something else you need the GM's Office to do an analysis of. Thanks! Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 19, 2011, 03:20:03 PM Our tax rate is nearly flat, but I approximated it as being flat. Unless otherwise specified by statute, our laws are those of Georgia c.2006. As you can see from Yelnoc's post that you quoted, Georgia's income tax is actually split into six brackets, but they are all at such low incomes that the ultimate effect is close to that of a flat tax.
Anyway, the IDS corporate income tax rate is 8.6%. I've noticed that that's actually a bit high for a sub-national government, though, so I would be happy to assist by reducing it to 6%. ;) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on April 19, 2011, 03:39:48 PM Our tax rate is nearly flat, but I approximated it as being flat. Unless otherwise specified by statute, our laws are those of Georgia c.2006. As you can see from Yelnoc's post that you quoted, Georgia's income tax is actually split into six brackets, but they are all at such low incomes that the ultimate effect is close to that of a flat tax. Anyway, the IDS corporate income tax rate is 8.6%. I've noticed that that's actually a bit high for a sub-national government, though, so I would be happy to assist by reducing it to 6%. ;) I guesstimated (generously) that GA's rate would equate about a 5.8% flat rate with the lower rates. Let me know if the IDS decides to accept that over a 6% flat rate. If so, the revenue would be $61.65 Bil instead. Or we can keep an 8.6% corporate rate and not only call it even, but also raise the GM Office's revenue estimates upwards further. ;) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 19, 2011, 03:44:04 PM Thank you very much Badger. So in summary, $35.6 Billion is the income from all state personal and corporate income taxes combined. $63.75 Billion would be the regional income if the IDS had a 6% corporate and personal income tax rate. Correct?
The first part I went ahead and added to the budget. Unfortunately, the IDS has an 8.6 corporate tax rate while our personal income tax is the aggregate of Georgia's tax. I suppose we could pass legislation to fix this; we'll have to discuss this. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 19, 2011, 05:12:08 PM 5.8% should be fine, unless we want to change that as well. :P
The corporate income tax is problematic insofar as it makes us uncompetitive when regions like the Mideast have graduated rates that max out at 5% (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=134385.0). If we lowered the corporate income tax rate to 5.8%, it would simplify the budget process & help the region's economy. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 19, 2011, 06:00:39 PM 5.8% should be fine, unless we want to change that as well. :P The corporate income tax is problematic insofar as it makes us uncompetitive when regions like the Mideast have graduated rates that max out at 5% (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=134385.0). If we lowered the corporate income tax rate to 5.8%, it would simplify the budget process & help the region's economy. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 19, 2011, 08:33:48 PM 5.8% should be fine, unless we want to change that as well. :P The corporate income tax is problematic insofar as it makes us uncompetitive when regions like the Mideast have graduated rates that max out at 5% (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=134385.0). If we lowered the corporate income tax rate to 5.8%, it would simplify the budget process & help the region's economy. Income taxes are already 5.8%, so that's not a problem. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 19, 2011, 08:38:27 PM 5.8% should be fine, unless we want to change that as well. :P The corporate income tax is problematic insofar as it makes us uncompetitive when regions like the Mideast have graduated rates that max out at 5% (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=134385.0). If we lowered the corporate income tax rate to 5.8%, it would simplify the budget process & help the region's economy. Income taxes are already 5.8%, so that's not a problem. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on April 20, 2011, 09:33:41 AM 5.8% should be fine, unless we want to change that as well. :P The corporate income tax is problematic insofar as it makes us uncompetitive when regions like the Mideast have graduated rates that max out at 5% (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=134385.0). If we lowered the corporate income tax rate to 5.8%, it would simplify the budget process & help the region's economy. The Mideast "budget" is just a proposal. I would wait until the Mideast actually assesses what their final budget is before worrying too much about "competativeness". GM's assessment to follow there. ;) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 20, 2011, 12:19:15 PM 5.8% should be fine, unless we want to change that as well. :P The corporate income tax is problematic insofar as it makes us uncompetitive when regions like the Mideast have graduated rates that max out at 5% (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=134385.0). If we lowered the corporate income tax rate to 5.8%, it would simplify the budget process & help the region's economy. The Mideast "budget" is just a proposal. I would wait until the Mideast actually assesses what their final budget is before worrying too much about "competativeness". GM's assessment to follow there. ;) It'll probably take us a little while to get to actually voting on the proposed change anyway. We've been talking about the possibility of reinstituting the death penalty, which has caused the Legislature to fall into disarray. End of the school year doesn't help. :P Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 21, 2011, 06:26:04 PM In the meantime, we can work on this.
-Property Taxes/Tax-Property/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4 The relevant section is bolded. Quote Chapter 4 - Taxation Section 31 - Excise and Sales Taxes Excise and sales taxes imposed by the Southeast Region or any of its subsidiary governments on electrical power produced by an approved nuclear plant shall be 80% of what they otherwise would be under law. Section 32 - Income Taxes A deduction of 10% of the gross income from the sale of electrical power produced by an approved nuclear plant shall be made to determine the net income of the producer for the purposes of income taxes imposed by the Southeast Region or any of its subsidiary governments. Section 33 - Property Taxes For purposes of taxation only, the assessed valuation of an approved nuclear plant shall be no greater than $50,000 per megawatt of generating capacity. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 21, 2011, 09:42:52 PM As we found out earlier, 270 billion kWh is produced in the region each year. That is equivalent to 8600 kWh/s, assuming continuous production, which is something of a stretch of course. That is equivalent to about 31000 MW of generating capacity, for a maximum property valuation of $1,550,000,000 for the region's 35 nuclear plants.
At that point you'd need to find the property tax rate & the real property value of these plants & calculate the differential. I suspect the real property value will not be easy to find, though. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 23, 2011, 04:39:51 PM How about we just assume that the maximum is the actual? Most likely, the real property values of these nuclear plants are locked away in some real life county office.
Property taxes tend to be a county-level affair. Since our goal is to combine the state and regional governments, do you think we could just ignore this initiative, considering it does not impact revenue in real terms? Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 23, 2011, 05:02:05 PM I think you're right. It seems like this initiative would only impact revenue for local governments, so it's not really relevant to us.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 23, 2011, 05:11:23 PM 2011 Budget Regional Spending Pensions-Base: $0 Health care: -Base: $0 Education: -Base: $0 -Tertiary Education/Other Capital Outlay-Higher Education/Southeastern Educational Incentive Act: $3.5 billion -Pre-Primary through Secondary Education/Other Capital Outlay - Elementary and Secondary Education/School Choice Initiative: $56.4 billion -Total: $59.9 billion Defense: -Base: $0 Welfare: -Base: $0 Protection: -Base: $0 Transportation: -Base: $0 General government: -Base: $0 Other spending: -Base: $0 -Cultural Services/Pentagram Creation Act: $200 million (1 time expense) -Total: 200 million Interest: -Base: $? Balance: -Base: -$? Σ: -Base: $0 -Total: 61.1 billion Regional Revenue Income Taxes: -Base: $0 -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Put the "free" back in Free Enterprise Bill: 32.5 billion -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: -66.1 million (-0.0661 billion) -Corporate Tax Rate: 8.6% (part of Free Enterprise Bill above - remember other provisions). -Personal Income Tax Rate: 0% (none) -Total: $32.4339 billion ($32,433,900,000) Social Security Taxes: -Base: $0 Ad-valorem Taxes: -Base: $0 -Excise Taxes/Tax-Alcoholic Beverage Sales/Southeast Alcohol Initiative, Section 8: $1.3127 billion ($1.00/proof liter or $0.385/gallon for beer, $0.909/gallon for wine, $3.31/gallon for spirits) -Excise Taxes/Tax-Tobacco Products Sales/Southeast Tobacco Initiative, Section 6: $0.04/cigarette ($6,034,000,000/year), $0.08/cigar ($80,000,000/year), $2.00/kg tobacco ($24,000,000/year) -Excise Taxes/Tax-Marijuana Products Sales: $3.00/ounce ($48,000,000/year) -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: 80% of standard electricity excise tax: $0 -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Biomass Initiative, Section 3: 80% of standard electricity excise tax: $0 -Property Taxes/Tax-Property/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: n/a ($0) -Transportation/Tax-Motor Fuel Sales/Transportation Commission Initiative, Chapter 3, Section 22: $0.08/liter ($17,284,230,161/year) -Transportation/Tax-Motor Vehicle License/Fair Consequences Initiative, Section 3: $10,700,000/year -License/Tax-Other License/Off-Shore Religious Organizations Initiative, Section 2: n/a ($0) -Total: $24,793,630,161 Fees and Charges: -Base: $0 -Other/Charges-All Other/Pentagram Creation Act: $5,700,000/year -Other/Charges-All Other/Safe Roads Initiative, Section 6: $44,400,000/year -Total: $50,100,000 ($0.0501 billion) Business and Other Revenue: -Base: $0 -Other/Miscellaneous-Net Lottery Revenue/Southeast Lottery Regulations, Section 6 (Amended by Expanding Choice Initiative) -Total: ? Total Direct Revenue: -base: $0 Gross Public Debt: -Base: $0 State Spending Pensions-Base: $3.81 billion Health care: -Base: $121.9 billion Education: -Base: $0 billion (pre-Educational Hotfix Act) -Base: $48.9 billion (post-Educational Hotfix Act - original figure was $73.4 billion) -Total: $48.9 billion Defense: -Base: $0.6 billion Welfare: -Base: $40.4 billion Protection: -Base: $21.5 billion Transportation: -Base: $28.2 billion General government: -Base: $7.4 billion Other spending: -Base: $18.7 billion Interest: -Base: $7.4 billion Balance: -Base: -$4.4 billion Σ: -Base: $352.1 billion State Revenue Income Taxes: -Base: $35.6 billion -Corporate Tax Rate: ? -Personal Income Tax Rate: ? -Total: ? Social Security Taxes: -Base: $15.1 billion Ad-valorem Taxes: -Base: $252.3 billion Fees and Charges: -Base: $107 billion Business and Other Revenue: -Base: $132.5 billion Total Direct Revenue: -base: $544.5 billion Gross Public Debt: -Base: $598.7 billion Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 23, 2011, 05:11:46 PM Alrighty then. Now for this.
-Transportation/Tax-Motor Fuel Sales/Transportation Commission Initiative, Chapter 3, Section 22: $0.08/liter Quote Section 22 - Excise Tax Liquid fuel sold in the Southeast Region after January 1, 2006 shall be subject to an excise tax by the Southeast Region of $0.08 per liter. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 23, 2011, 05:15:50 PM I'm guessing the reason that the state spending on education is 2/3rds of the original is because we only repealed the School Choice Initiative about 1/3rd of the way through the year?
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 23, 2011, 05:18:47 PM I'm guessing the reason that the state spending on education is 2/3rds of the original is because we only repealed the School Choice Initiative about 1/3rd of the way through the year? I found a good site (http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/motorfuel/sales_taxes_figures.htm) for 2006 fuel numbers that I think we can base this off of. I'll go combine gasoline and diesel sales for the IDS states and be right back. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 23, 2011, 05:30:23 PM Fuel Consumption (1000s of Gallons)
Alabama 3,450,983 Arkansas 2,084,115 Florida 10,487,556 Georgia 6,549,461 Louisiana 3,409,534 Mississippi 2,304,533 North Carolina 5,523,563 South Carolina 3,263,772 Tennessee 4,138,498 Texas 15,864,117 Total 57,075,132,000 Note: State numbers are 1000s of gallons, the total is the actual figure. That is equal to 216,052,877,018 Liters. So eight cents per liter generates $17,284,230,161 per year. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 23, 2011, 05:35:02 PM And now this.
-Transportation/Tax-Motor Vehicle License/Fair Consequences Initiative, Section 3 Quote Section 3: Fiscal Impact, Funding Funding for the Southeast Regional Sex Offender Database shall be provided by increasing the driver's license fee by one dollar. Any excess funds shall be placed into the general activities fund. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 23, 2011, 09:31:20 PM According to page 12 of this PDF (http://budget.mt.gov/content/execbudgets/2013_Budget/2013B_Docs/Section_09.pdf), the state of Montana issued about 131,000 driver's licenses in 2010. Multiplying by (80882282/989415), we get about 10,700,000 issued for the IDS. At an increase of $1 per license, that conveniently gives us $10,700,000/year.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 23, 2011, 10:21:27 PM This is the last Ad-valorum tax!
-License/Tax-Other License/Off-Shore Religious Organizations Initiative, Section 2 Quote Section Two 1. Incorporation as an Off-Shore religious institution shall cost a registration fee of $2,000 and a maintenance fee of $750 per year. 2. All fees mentioned in this initiative shall be annually adjusted for the CPI. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 23, 2011, 10:22:53 PM Unless we have any offshore religious institutions, I am pretty sure we can go ahead and ignore this.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 23, 2011, 10:46:50 PM I don't even know what an offshore religious institution would be or why that initiative was passed. Unless someone who knows about the reasoning behind it would like to step forward, I agree that we should probably just ignore it.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 24, 2011, 12:05:53 AM Ok, one last initiative and we are done with the regional portion of the budget!!!
Other/Miscellaneous-Net Lottery Revenue/Southeast Lottery Regulations, Section 6 (Amended by Expanding Choice Initiative) Quote 6. The Southeast shall also establish a Regional Education Tax to subsidize the Lottery Education Fund. This tax may only be collected to finance the Student Scholarships and all profits will be added directly to the Southeast Lottery Education Fund. 7. The amount of the Regional Education Tax shall be determined every fiscal year by dividing the monetary needs of the School System, minus the funds in the Lottery Education Fund, by each Resident of the Southeast. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 24, 2011, 12:08:22 AM I am thinking that from this we aren't going to be able to place revenue figures in the budget. Is it another $0 or should we make a note in the education section?
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 24, 2011, 12:15:58 AM The Education Tax is equivalent to the difference between the Education budget & the amount put into the Lottery Education Fund, which is equivalent to 90% of what is raised by the regional lottery. If we could find out how much that is, it would be possible to figure out the value of the Education Tax.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 24, 2011, 12:34:21 AM The Education Tax is equivalent to the difference between the Education budget & the amount put into the Lottery Education Fund, which is equivalent to 90% of what is raised by the regional lottery. If we could find out how much that is, it would be possible to figure out the value of the Education Tax. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 24, 2011, 12:44:49 AM The Education Tax is equivalent to the difference between the Education budget & the amount put into the Lottery Education Fund, which is equivalent to 90% of what is raised by the regional lottery. If we could find out how much that is, it would be possible to figure out the value of the Education Tax. To my knowledge, the Lottery Regulations (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Southeast_Lottery_Regulations), the Lottery Initiative (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Lottery_Initiative), & the Expanding Choice Initiative (https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/Expanding_Choice_Initiative) constitute the totality of the laws passed by the region on the subject. Looking at the laws, it seems that the Education Tax is actually only meant to fund the scholarships prescribed by the Lottery Initiatve. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 24, 2011, 08:43:21 AM From what I can tell, this whole program is outside the IDS budget in terms of revenue and expenditures. I think we are done. I'll post the budget below one last time and then we can move onto the last phase; combining the budgets.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 24, 2011, 08:52:13 AM 2011 Budget Regional Spending Pensions-Base: $0 Health care: -Base: $0 Education: -Base: $0 -Tertiary Education/Other Capital Outlay-Higher Education/Southeastern Educational Incentive Act: $3.5 billion -Pre-Primary through Secondary Education/Other Capital Outlay - Elementary and Secondary Education/School Choice Initiative: $56.4 billion -Total: $59.9 billion Defense: -Base: $0 Welfare: -Base: $0 Protection: -Base: $0 Transportation: -Base: $0 General government: -Base: $0 Other spending: -Base: $0 -Cultural Services/Pentagram Creation Act: $200 million (1 time expense) -Total: 200 million Interest: -Base: $? Balance: -Base: $26,327,630,161 Σ: -Base: $0 -Total: 60.1 billion Regional Revenue Income Taxes: -Base: $0 -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Put the "free" back in Free Enterprise Bill: (see personal income tax rate) -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: -66.1 million (-0.0661 billion) -Corporate Tax Rate: 8.6% (part of Free Enterprise Bill above - remember other provisions). -Personal Income Tax Rate: 5.8% ($$61,650,000,000/year) -Total: $61,583,900,000 Social Security Taxes: -Base: $0 Ad-valorem Taxes: -Base: $0 -Excise Taxes/Tax-Alcoholic Beverage Sales/Southeast Alcohol Initiative, Section 8: $1.3127 billion ($1.00/proof liter or $0.385/gallon for beer, $0.909/gallon for wine, $3.31/gallon for spirits) -Excise Taxes/Tax-Tobacco Products Sales/Southeast Tobacco Initiative, Section 6: $0.04/cigarette ($6,034,000,000/year), $0.08/cigar ($80,000,000/year), $2.00/kg tobacco ($24,000,000/year) -Excise Taxes/Tax-Marijuana Products Sales: $3.00/ounce ($48,000,000/year) -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: 80% of standard electricity excise tax: $0 -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Biomass Initiative, Section 3: 80% of standard electricity excise tax: $0 -Property Taxes/Tax-Property/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: n/a ($0) -Transportation/Tax-Motor Fuel Sales/Transportation Commission Initiative, Chapter 3, Section 22: $0.08/liter ($17,284,230,161/year) -Transportation/Tax-Motor Vehicle License/Fair Consequences Initiative, Section 3: $10,700,000/year -License/Tax-Other License/Off-Shore Religious Organizations Initiative, Section 2: n/a ($0) -Total: $24,793,630,161 Fees and Charges: -Base: $0 -Other/Charges-All Other/Pentagram Creation Act: $5,700,000/year -Other/Charges-All Other/Safe Roads Initiative, Section 6: $44,400,000/year -Total: $50,100,000 ($0.0501 billion) Business and Other Revenue: -Base: $0 -Other/Miscellaneous-Net Lottery Revenue/Southeast Lottery Regulations, Section 6 (Amended by Expanding Choice Initiative): $0 (not directly related to the budget) -Total: $0 Total Direct Revenue: -Base: $0 -Total: $86,427,630,161 Gross Public Debt: -Base: $0 -Total: ? State Spending Pensions-Base: $3.81 billion Health care: -Base: $121.9 billion Education: -Base: $0 billion (pre-Educational Hotfix Act) -Base: $48.9 billion (post-Educational Hotfix Act - original figure was $73.4 billion) -Total: $48.9 billion Defense: -Base: $0.6 billion Welfare: -Base: $40.4 billion Protection: -Base: $21.5 billion Transportation: -Base: $28.2 billion General government: -Base: $7.4 billion Other spending: -Base: $18.7 billion -Puerto Rico: $17.27 billion Interest: -Base: $7.4 billion Balance: -Base: -$4.4 billion Σ: -Base: $311.7 billion State Revenue Income Taxes: -Base: $35.6 billion -Corporate Tax Rate: ? -Personal Income Tax Rate: ? -Total: ? Social Security Taxes: -Base: $15.1 billion Ad-valorem Taxes: -Base: $252.3 billion Fees and Charges: -Base: $107 billion Business and Other Revenue: -Base: $132.5 billion -Puerto Rico: 24.96 billion Total Direct Revenue: -base: $531.9 billion Gross Public Debt: -Base: $598.7 billion Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 24, 2011, 08:55:47 AM Amazingly, this budget leaves us about $3 million in the hole. Now, onto combination. That part will have to go through the legislature. We can go ahead and get rid of the revenue from state corporate taxes because of the bill we just passed. I'm thinking we should pass an omnibus bill mandating all of the transfers. This part we actually have some control over the final result, because we can choose which items to take from state budgets and which to leave as is in the regional budget.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 24, 2011, 03:19:01 PM Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 24, 2011, 03:23:23 PM Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 24, 2011, 03:41:58 PM Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for. According to ths (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/25965.html), there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one). Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 24, 2011, 05:14:06 PM So, we currently have an epic surplus of $63,077,630,161. Once the legislature elects a new speaker, one of us will have to write up an omnibus bill combine the two budgets.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 24, 2011, 06:42:59 PM I'm not sure how one would write such a bill, unfortunately. Perhaps say that we are counting all state spending & revenue as part of the region's spending & revenue for accountability purposes?
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 24, 2011, 07:34:39 PM I'm not sure how one would write such a bill, unfortunately. Perhaps say that we are counting all state spending & revenue as part of the region's spending & revenue for accountability purposes? Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 24, 2011, 07:36:21 PM I'm not sure how one would write such a bill, unfortunately. Perhaps say that we are counting all state spending & revenue as part of the region's spending & revenue for accountability purposes? I think we're only dropping the corporate tax portions. Should we drop state income taxes as well for the sake of simplicity? ;) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 24, 2011, 07:38:19 PM I'm not sure how one would write such a bill, unfortunately. Perhaps say that we are counting all state spending & revenue as part of the region's spending & revenue for accountability purposes? I think we're only dropping the corporate tax portions. Should we drop state income taxes as well for the sake of simplicity? ;) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 24, 2011, 07:48:28 PM How about:
IDS Budget Combination Bill 1. For budgetary purposes, collection of revenue for state-level taxes and payment for expenditures due to state-level programs shall be handled by the regional government of the Imperial Dominion of the South. 2. No state in the Imperial Dominion of the South may levy an income tax on its citizenry. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 24, 2011, 08:24:44 PM That looks good to me. I would appreciate it if this was the first bill considered by the legislature once a new speaker is selected.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on April 29, 2011, 07:08:32 PM Just as a reminder, we are going to have to calculate for Puerto Rico before we complete the combination.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on April 29, 2011, 07:18:27 PM Oh yeah, we never did that. Assuming we can't find anything, I think we could just approximate Puerto Rico's numbers by assuming they are the same per capita as those for the rest of the region.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on May 02, 2011, 10:21:46 AM Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for. According to ths (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/25965.html), there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one). Whoa, whoa, whoa here! I would insist we use this calculation instead (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=132028.msg2875239#msg2875239). For determination of income tax revenue. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on May 02, 2011, 01:49:55 PM Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for. According to ths (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/25965.html), there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one). Whoa, whoa, whoa here! I would insist we use this calculation instead (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=132028.msg2875239#msg2875239). For determination of income tax revenue. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on May 03, 2011, 05:11:54 PM Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for. According to ths (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/25965.html), there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one). Whoa, whoa, whoa here! I would insist we use this calculation instead (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=132028.msg2875239#msg2875239). For determination of income tax revenue. When I posted that, the personal & corporate income tax rates were different, so I don't think that doing it that way would have been valid. Now that they are the same, doing it that way should be fine. However, that means that we will have to eliminate the $32.5 billion that we calculated for the regional corporate tax, since the $61.65 billion accounts for that. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on May 03, 2011, 08:17:10 PM Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for. According to ths (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/25965.html), there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one). Whoa, whoa, whoa here! I would insist we use this calculation instead (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=132028.msg2875239#msg2875239). For determination of income tax revenue. When I posted that, the personal & corporate income tax rates were different, so I don't think that doing it that way would have been valid. Now that they are the same, doing it that way should be fine. However, that means that we will have to eliminate the $32.5 billion that we calculated for the regional corporate tax, since the $61.65 billion accounts for that. For Puerto Rico, I was thinking we could just take the average of each state category and assign that figure to Puerto Rico's expenses and revenues. Is that ok or does it need to be scaled to population? Once we figure that out we can go through and combine the two budgets. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on May 03, 2011, 08:59:43 PM Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for. According to ths (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/25965.html), there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one). Whoa, whoa, whoa here! I would insist we use this calculation instead (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=132028.msg2875239#msg2875239). For determination of income tax revenue. When I posted that, the personal & corporate income tax rates were different, so I don't think that doing it that way would have been valid. Now that they are the same, doing it that way should be fine. However, that means that we will have to eliminate the $32.5 billion that we calculated for the regional corporate tax, since the $61.65 billion accounts for that. For Puerto Rico, I was thinking we could just take the average of each state category and assign that figure to Puerto Rico's expenses and revenues. Is that ok or does it need to be scaled to population? Once we figure that out we can go through and combine the two budgets. Scaling it to population would probably be wise. I am guessing that Puerto Rico is somewhat below average for population among states in the region. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on May 03, 2011, 09:05:53 PM Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for. According to ths (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/25965.html), there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one). Whoa, whoa, whoa here! I would insist we use this calculation instead (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=132028.msg2875239#msg2875239). For determination of income tax revenue. When I posted that, the personal & corporate income tax rates were different, so I don't think that doing it that way would have been valid. Now that they are the same, doing it that way should be fine. However, that means that we will have to eliminate the $32.5 billion that we calculated for the regional corporate tax, since the $61.65 billion accounts for that. For Puerto Rico, I was thinking we could just take the average of each state category and assign that figure to Puerto Rico's expenses and revenues. Is that ok or does it need to be scaled to population? Once we figure that out we can go through and combine the two budgets. Scaling it to population would probably be wise. I am guessing that Puerto Rico is somewhat below average for population among states in the region. Texas Florida Georgia North Carolina Tennessee Alabama South Carolina Louisiana Puerto Rico Mississippi Arkansas I don't know how you would weight for population though. :/ Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on May 04, 2011, 01:13:00 AM Average population for a state in the region is 7,352,934 people. The population of Puerto Rico is 3,967,288. So to estimate Puerto Rico, we should divide the regional numbers by 11 & then multiply them by (3967288/7352934), which gives us $17,270,000,000/year for its expenditures & $24,960,000,000/year for its revenues.
Also note that the state-level income tax numbers are now zero following the passage of the IDS Budget Combination Bill. I calculated Puerto Rico's revenue taking that into account. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on May 04, 2011, 04:34:36 PM Average population for a state in the region is 7,352,934 people. The population of Puerto Rico is 3,967,288. So to estimate Puerto Rico, we should divide the regional numbers by 11 & then multiply them by (3967288/7352934), which gives us $17,270,000,000/year for its expenditures & $24,960,000,000/year for its revenues. Also note that the state-level income tax numbers are now zero following the passage of the IDS Budget Combination Bill. I calculated Puerto Rico's revenue taking that into account. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on May 04, 2011, 05:37:46 PM I get $311.7 billion for state spending & $531.9 billion for state revenue after the adjustments have been made. Regional numbers are basically correct. We should probably recalculate the tax break for nuclear plants since we reduced the corporate income tax rate, though the difference would be so small that it's not really worth it.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on May 05, 2011, 02:19:59 PM I get $311.7 billion for state spending & $531.9 billion for state revenue after the adjustments have been made. Regional numbers are basically correct. We should probably recalculate the tax break for nuclear plants since we reduced the corporate income tax rate, though the difference would be so small that it's not really worth it. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on May 05, 2011, 05:14:28 PM I think we've covered everything that will have a non-trivial effect on the final budget.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Badger on May 06, 2011, 11:26:38 AM I admit I've lost total track of the calculations here (and that's a compliment to the number and detail of posts here). If possible, could we post a summarized budget with calculations noted herein so I can review/grade it all at once please?
Again, great job guys. :) Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on May 06, 2011, 09:35:10 PM I admit I've lost total track of the calculations here (and that's a compliment to the number and detail of posts here). If possible, could we post a summarized budget with calculations noted herein so I can review/grade it all at once please? Again, great job guys. :) As I understand it, this (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=132028.msg2879737#msg2879737) is essentially final, though the state-level income tax hasn't been zero'd yet there. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on May 08, 2011, 07:30:10 PM 2011 Budget Notes
Regional Spending Pensions-Base: $3.81 billion -Total: $3.81 billion Health care: -Base: $121.9 billion -Total: $121.9 billion Education: -Base: $48.9 billion (post-Educational Hotfix Act - original figure was $0, real-life gross state figure is $73.4 billion) -Tertiary Education/Other Capital Outlay-Higher Education/Southeastern Educational Incentive Act: $3.5 billion -Pre-Primary through Secondary Education/Other Capital Outlay - Elementary and Secondary Education/School Choice Initiative: $56.4 billion -Total: $108.8 billion Defense: -Base: $0.6 billion -Total: $0.6 billion Welfare: -Base: $40.4 billion -Total: $40.4 billion Protection: -Base: $21.5 billion -Total: $21.5 billion Transportation: -Base: $28.2 billion -Total: $28.2 billion General government: -Base: $7.4 billion -Total: $7.4 billion Other spending: -Base: $18.7 billion -Cultural Services/Pentagram Creation Act: $200 million (1 time expense) -Puerto Rico: $17.27 billion (total spending of PR- PR is not included in any other category in Spending but the Total Regional Spending) -Total: $36.17 billion Interest: $7.4 billion (assumes that Regional Government does not have to pay its own interest) Total Regional Spending: $376.18 billion (includes Interest) Regional Revenue Income Taxes: -Base: $0 (state cannot collect their own income taxes) -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Put the "free" back in Free Enterprise Bill: (see personal income tax rate) -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: -66.1 million (-0.0661 billion) -Corporate Tax Rate: 8.6% (part of Free Enterprise Bill above - remember other provisions). -Personal Income Tax Rate: 5.8% ($$61,650,000,000/year) -Total: $61,583,900,000 or $61.5839 billion Social Security Taxes: -Base: $15.1 billion -Total: $15.1 billion Ad-valorem Taxes: -Base: $252.3 billion -Excise Taxes/Tax-Alcoholic Beverage Sales/Southeast Alcohol Initiative, Section 8: $1.3127 billion ($1.00/proof liter or $0.385/gallon for beer, $0.909/gallon for wine, $3.31/gallon for spirits) -Excise Taxes/Tax-Tobacco Products Sales/Southeast Tobacco Initiative, Section 6: $0.04/cigarette ($6,034,000,000/year), $0.08/cigar ($80,000,000/year), $2.00/kg tobacco ($24,000,000/year) -Excise Taxes/Tax-Marijuana Products Sales: $3.00/ounce ($48,000,000/year) -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: 80% of standard electricity excise tax: $0 -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Biomass Initiative, Section 3: 80% of standard electricity excise tax: $0 -Property Taxes/Tax-Property/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: n/a ($0) -Transportation/Tax-Motor Fuel Sales/Transportation Commission Initiative, Chapter 3, Section 22: $0.08/liter ($17,284,230,161/year) -Transportation/Tax-Motor Vehicle License/Fair Consequences Initiative, Section 3: $10,700,000/year -License/Tax-Other License/Off-Shore Religious Organizations Initiative, Section 2: n/a ($0) -Total: $277,093,630,161 or $277.093630161 billion Fees and Charges: -Base: $107 billion -Other/Charges-All Other/Pentagram Creation Act: $5,700,000/year -Other/Charges-All Other/Safe Roads Initiative, Section 6: $44,400,000/year -Total: $107,050,100,00 or $107.0501 billion Business and Other Revenue: -Base: $132.5 billion -Puerto Rico: 24.96 billion -Total: $157.46 billion Gross Public Debt: $598.7 billion (assumes that Regional Government has not accumulated its own public debt) Rainy Day Fund: $25 billion Total Regional Revenue: $618,287,630,161 (does not include Gross Public Debt or Rainy Day Fund) $Balance: 242,107,630,161 Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on May 08, 2011, 08:07:24 PM It is completed!!! Hallelujah! PiT and Badger, would you guys glance through it? Unless you see any actual errors in my calculations, let's get this passed by the legislature before amending it to suit the region's policy.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on May 08, 2011, 08:17:30 PM The revenue for fees & charges should be $107,050,100,000.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on May 08, 2011, 08:29:51 PM The revenue for fees & charges should be $107,050,100,000. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on May 08, 2011, 09:32:44 PM The revenue for fees & charges should be $107,050,100,000. No, everything seems to be added up correctly now. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on May 08, 2011, 09:36:57 PM The revenue for fees & charges should be $107,050,100,000. No, everything seems to be added up correctly now. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on May 13, 2011, 02:21:11 PM Badger said he was busy at work this week so no worries. Just bumping this.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on June 01, 2011, 11:44:36 AM This has my ok. As the old speaker, would you guys do me a favor and pass it ASAP?
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on June 04, 2011, 09:27:22 AM Didn't see this sooner. I'll take care of it right away.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on January 01, 2012, 12:42:35 AM I have compiled the 2012 budget. In doing so, however, I have obtained revenue numbers that were very different from those that we got last year. Nevertheless, here is the new budget, presented for inspection:
2012 Budget Notes
Regional Spending Pensions-Base: $35.8 billion -Total: $35.8 billion Health care: -Base: $113.9 billion -Total: $113.9 billion Education: -Base: $66.8 billion -Tertiary Education/Other Capital Outlay-Higher Education/Southeastern Educational Incentive Act: $3.5 billion -Total: $70.3 billion Defense: -Base: $0.7 billion -Military Defense/IDS Militia Structure Act: $0.4365 billion -Total: $1.1365 billion Welfare: -Base: $36.5 billion -Total: $36.5 billion Protection: -Base: $21.0 billion -Total: $21.0 billion Transportation: -Base: $30.1 billion -Total: $30.1 billion General government: -Base: $6.7 billion -Total: $6.7 billion Other spending: -Base: $20.5 billion -Puerto Rico: $16.61 billion (total spending of PR- PR is not included in any other category in Spending but the Total Regional Spending) -Total: $37.11 billion Interest: $6.6 billion (assumes that Regional Government does not have to pay its own interest) Total Regional Spending: $359.1465 billion (includes Interest) Regional Revenue Income Taxes: -Base: $0 (state cannot collect their own income taxes) -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Put the "free" back in Free Enterprise Bill: (see personal income tax rate) -Corporate Income Tax/Tax-Corporate Net Income/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: -66.1 million (-0.0661 billion) -Corporate Tax Rate: 8.6% (part of Free Enterprise Bill above - remember other provisions). -Personal Income Tax Rate: 5.8% ($61,650,000,000/year) -Total: $61,583,900,000 or $61.5839 billion Social Security Taxes: -Base: $20.1 billion -Total: $20.1 billion Ad-valorem Taxes: -Base: $140.0 billion -Excise Taxes/Tax-Alcoholic Beverage Sales/Southeast Alcohol Initiative, Section 8: $1.3127 billion ($1.00/proof liter or $0.385/gallon for beer, $0.909/gallon for wine, $3.31/gallon for spirits) -Excise Taxes/Tax-Tobacco Products Sales/Southeast Tobacco Initiative, Section 6: $0.04/cigarette ($6,034,000,000/year), $0.08/cigar ($80,000,000/year), $2.00/kg tobacco ($24,000,000/year) -Excise Taxes/Tax-Marijuana Products Sales: $3.00/ounce ($48,000,000/year) -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: 80% of standard electricity excise tax: $0 -Sales Taxes/Tax-Public Utilities Sale/Southeast Biomass Initiative, Section 3: 80% of standard electricity excise tax: $0 -Property Taxes/Tax-Property/Southeast Nuclear Energy Initiative, Chapter 4: n/a ($0) -Transportation/Tax-Motor Fuel Sales/Transportation Commission Initiative, Chapter 3, Section 22: $0.08/liter ($17,284,230,161/year) -Transportation/Tax-Motor Vehicle License/Fair Consequences Initiative, Section 3: $10,700,000/year -License/Tax-Other License/Off-Shore Religious Organizations Initiative, Section 2: n/a ($0) -Total: $147,265,400,000 or $147.2564 billion Fees and Charges: -Base: $42.7 billion -Other/Charges-All Other/Pentagram Creation Act: $5,700,000/year -Other/Charges-All Other/Safe Roads Initiative, Section 6: $44,400,000/year -Total: $42,750,100,000 or $42.7501 billion Business and Other Revenue: -Base: $87.9 billion -Puerto Rico: $17.28 billion -Total: $105.18 billion Gross Public Debt: $382,028,869,839 (assumes that Regional Government has not accumulated its own public debt) Rainy Day Fund: $35 billion Total Regional Revenue: $376,870,400,000 (does not include Gross Public Debt or Rainy Day Fund) Balance: $17,723,900,000 Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on January 02, 2012, 04:44:08 PM No interest in the 2012 budget? :(
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Mr. Taft Republican on January 03, 2012, 07:48:32 PM Looking good bruh! :D
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Pingvin on January 04, 2012, 01:32:14 AM Looking good bruh! :D Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: CLARENCE 2015! on January 04, 2012, 02:23:46 AM Ok by me
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on January 04, 2012, 06:28:46 PM I guess it's fine. I have a vague feeling we're missing something, but I guess with no reality to bite us in the ass it works. And I'm tired. So let's pass it.
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: 🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸 on January 05, 2012, 01:50:58 AM You have a positive balance?!
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on January 05, 2012, 03:04:28 AM You have a positive balance?! We've passed very few expenditures over the years. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: CLARENCE 2015! on January 05, 2012, 09:19:56 PM Can I move to give surplus to taxpayers in the form of rebate?
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on January 05, 2012, 09:31:19 PM Can I move to give surplus to taxpayers in the form of rebate? Well, the Legislature is currently debating the adoption of this proposed budget. After that, there should be no issue with doing that, or considering another course of action. I know Yelnoc suggested eliminating fuel taxes. Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: CLARENCE 2015! on January 05, 2012, 10:41:59 PM Where is the debate on the adoption of the budget? I am lost...
Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Yelnoc on January 06, 2012, 12:08:25 PM Where is the debate on the adoption of the budget? I am lost... Title: Re: IDS Budget and Tax Committee Post by: Associate Justice PiT on January 06, 2012, 02:31:33 PM It did not because the Legislature did not. The Budget reflects current law.
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