MA: Regional Budget (In the works)

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

so... how do we keep this process moving forward?

and can we look at doing some tax reform?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

To clear this all up for all the tax credits I wrote (no change) for all of them because I was thinking it would be based off of the first budget, therefore it would be impossible for a change of added or subracted dollars. I only could guess on the tax credits necessary for positive economic growth based off of the national tax credits but for 1/4 of the nation. Is this making sense?

Anyways I would just like to clear that up. Ask me if this still doesn't make sense.

Thanks

I was assuming that the list and figures of tax credits/deductions were based off the total of state level tax expenditures. But now, if I understand you correctly, you are saying they were based on a list of those for the nation, divided by 4? 
I understand then why they added up to be so much in comparison to the budget, since as far as I know, states do not generally have many tax deductions, especially compared to the federal level which has many.
In that case there may not be much room to raise the region's revenue through eliminating tax credits and deductions, but I may look into it a bit more to see which states have them.
   

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Yes, in reality the numbers I proposed were complete guestimations to start off the debate. Though if we left them at current levels, those tax credits and deductions would be a lot more than RL, which would in turn boost our economy.

The problem is I'm not sure we have the funds to allow those tax credits - because your tax credits have to be much lower than what your tax revenue would be without them - otherwise you wont have any money to fund the government.  My understanding is that Badger made his revenue calculation based on RL state tax deduction policy. So I believe we should be starting from RL in terms of what deductions to get rid of, not to add to, given our potential deficit. Some credits may be helpful to economic growth, but most are not worth higher deficits or higher overall tax rates.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

here are links to state tax expenditure reports: http://www.itepnet.org/other_resources/state_tereport.php     (some of them - i read not all states do them and Virginia doesn't seem to have its 5yr report completed)
i dunno if maybe there's a way to make a simple estimate, maybe choose one state that's representative of the region and extrapolate that figure based on the ratio of GDP from state to region?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

so if we find the relevant tax statutes, is there a way to calculate the total cost of the deduction?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'm a bit concerned about just adding the stimulus dollars into the figures for the general budget.

That means that when the stimulus money runs out, we have to find a new source of revenue and start from scratch on the budget, right? I think it's better to keep it as a separate add on to a baseline spending amount.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

so here's what what was in the federal stimulus for the mideast region, right?

a. Mideast ($20 billion) 
    1. $10 billion for Health Care, including repair/building of health facilities, child health care deductions, and other various needs.
    2. $1 billion for tax credits on green cars.
    3. $5 billion for rural infrastructure.
    4. $3.9 billion to be put at the direct disposal of the Mideast Regional Government.
    5. $100 million for sexual education classes in the region.

how much is funding for current programs, and how much is for new/temporary programs?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

so here's what what was in the federal stimulus for the mideast region, right?

a. Mideast ($20 billion) 
    1. $10 billion for Health Care, including repair/building of health facilities, child health care deductions, and other various needs.
    2. $1 billion for tax credits on green cars.
    3. $5 billion for rural infrastructure.
    4. $3.9 billion to be put at the direct disposal of the Mideast Regional Government.
    5. $100 million for sexual education classes in the region.

how much is funding for current programs, and how much is for new/temporary programs?

I was only talking about the 3.9 billion given to our disposal, if that clears things up

are the rest federal programs? or do we need to budget it?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

so here's what what was in the federal stimulus for the mideast region, right?

a. Mideast ($20 billion) 
    1. $10 billion for Health Care, including repair/building of health facilities, child health care deductions, and other various needs.
    2. $1 billion for tax credits on green cars.
    3. $5 billion for rural infrastructure.
    4. $3.9 billion to be put at the direct disposal of the Mideast Regional Government.
    5. $100 million for sexual education classes in the region.

how much is funding for current programs, and how much is for new/temporary programs?

I was only talking about the 3.9 billion given to our disposal, if that clears things up

are the rest federal programs? or do we need to budget it?

The rest I was just considering to be extra federal programs on top of our budget. Though if we absolitely had to do balance a budget, we could cut a few billion from health care and be saved this first budget

yeah I really don't see the sense of budgeting anything except what we actually have control over, and that 3.9 G I would suggest we just set aside directly into the revenue column.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Wouldn't it be best to balence the budget, not raise taxes and send some of the stimulus back to the Feds? The better thing to do would be to cut spending.

hopefully we will be able to use the stimulus funds at our disposal directly toward balancing this year's budget.  we will be cutting spending too, but we wont know how much until we see just how big this deficit actually is.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

From those figures it looks like revenue exceeds spending by 45 B, so  we could raise pensions to RL levels and still be in the black - Am I missing something?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Do you have any figures available for RL capital gains and/or fuel tax revenue?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

okay, from here it looks like the fuel tax is about 9.1 B for mideast states, so i guess we would raise about 8 B by putting this at RL, right?  to me, a fuel tax makes sense as a source of revenue to help pay for transportation costs.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I believe the Medicaid program has been replaced by the Atlasian National Healthcare Act, so I don't think we need to be allocating funds to that.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Well that's great. So really we'd only have tax credits for the businesses who provide it for their employees (or self employed people) and could save some tens of billions.

I'd assume we wouldn't need prescription drug funds either as that is currently inclunded in RL section D and atlasia's health care took over all of that correct?

yes, prescription drugs are specifically mentioned as included. the region should continue funding for public health and the like, but as far as providing insurance, that has been shifted to the national government.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The Mideast has social insurance taxes?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The Mideast has social insurance taxes?

I'm not sure what you're looking at?

As things stand, not a ton has changed from the last time Badger guesstimated revenue numbers. The income tax changes are good, and help, but most of the changes are either very small, or the all new bracket that doesn't really make much of a difference simply because of how much someone has to earn to actually hit it.

But either way.. :

Revenue:

Amount

Income Taxes:	$34.6 B
Social Insurance Taxes:	$24.4 B[/b]
"Ad Valorum" Taxes:	$108.5 B
Fees:	$43.3 B
Business and Other:	$66.3 B
TOTAL:	$277.1 B

*(I included the increase in license fees under Ad Valorum and Business taxes, for the most part. I truthfully had no idea where they really belonged.)

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The Mideast has social insurance taxes?

Truthfully I took Badger's analysis and gave it the benefit of the doubt and then just built upon it. I just mirrored them to RL taxes in that respect and kept them that way since they weren't mentioned in your budget.

You could use the help, though. I wouldn't start getting picky.

As for the budget more broadly, I'll have an update on those amended numbers for you soon enough.

Okay. It's odd because it seemed like we discussed in detail with Badger every other revenue source except that one. I think I was going to ask him about it when he posted those but forgot because he didn't mention them again. It seems like if we're collecting social insurance taxes we ought to be spending it mostly on some sort of social insurance. But I'm not sure what programs that would apply to on the regional level.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

bumping because we put to much work into this to forget about it completely

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

It looks like you just need the numbers on the tax revenue aside from income tax.
SoIA and/or I can help you with that.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If someone can let me know what the difference is between the current proposal and the one before it, that would help me figure out how the revenue projection.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

okay, I figured out what the changes are.

----
Income Tax Rate: April Proposal   Revenue projected:
0%    $0 - $13,000
1%    $13,001 - $40,000
1.5%    $40,001 - $100,000
2%    $100,001 - $180,000
2.5%    $180,001 - $300,000
3.20%    $300,001 - $750,000
4%    $750,001 - $2,750,000
5%    $2,750,001- $9,999,999
6.5%   $10,000,000+

Income Tax Rate: August Proposal
0%    $0 - $13,000
1%    $13,001 - $40,000
1.5%    $40,001 - $100,000
2.2%    $100,001 - $180,000
2.7%    $180,001 - $300,000
3.25%    $300,001 - $750,000
4%    $750,001 - $2,750,000
5%    $2,750,001- $9,999,999
6.5%   $10,000,000+

Corporate Tax Rate: no change. 
0%    $0 - $50,000
0.5%    $50,001 - $75,000
1%    $75,001 - $125,000
1.5%    $125,001 - $350,000
2%    $350,001 - $1,000,000
2.5%    $1,000,001 - $10,000,000
3.25%    $10,000,001 - $20,000,000
4%    $20,000,001-$70,000,000
5%   $70,000,001+

Sales Tax Rate: 5.7% (Groceries, prescription drugs exempt)  No change.

Excise Taxes:
April Proposal:
Gas: 1.5 cents/gallon (2 cents/gallon for diesel).
Cigarettes: $1.60 per pack.
Other Tobacco Products: 55% Manufactures Price
Distilled Spirits: $2.70 per gallon
Wine: $0.30 per gallon
Beer: $0.20 per gallon

August Proposal:
Gas: 7 cents/gallon (10 cents/gallon for diesel).
Cigarettes: $1.60 per pack.
Other Tobacco Products: 55% Manufactures Price
Distilled Spirits: $2.70 per gallon
Wine: $0.30 per gallon
Beer: $0.20 per gallon
Marijuana: $3.00/gram if owner possesses less than 28 grams
$4.50/gram if owner possesses 28 grams or more

____________________________________________________
I expect I'll use the previously calculated revenue numbers where there hasn't been a change, since whether these numbers are too high or too low are going to depend so much on unpredictable changes in policy, and these are rough projections/ estimations anyway. 

The marijuana tax doesn't make much sense to me. You can tax marijuana, but when you talk about "possesses" that's not an excise tax - it's a property tax, and you'll need property assessors going around seeing how much marijuana people have.  If you want an excise tax, you really need a single rate regardless of the amount of an item being purchased.  Otherwise, a single transaction can just be divided up into two transactions to escape the higher tax rate.  So . . . I guess I'll just assume it's a $3/gram excise tax.  Maybe someone more familiar with the um, consumption rate of marijuana can help me out in my calculation.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I figured the change in the income tax there is about +0.7 Billion and the increase in the gas tax is about +1.8 Billion.  So, not a large difference in  terms of the total budget. ( I'll wait on making any estimation on a marijuana tax here, since there's a bill being discussed now that would dedicate any money from a proposed tax. )
I'll need to find out what the deal is with that social insurance tax revenue, since it seems large to me, and I don't know of any social insurance program in the budget except unemployment insurance.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The figure for the Marijuana Tax is $2.40 billion.  It is spent on the following:
$1.2 billion    Victim Compensation Fund
$1.08 billion  Cannabis Prevention Center
$0.12 billion  community murals

Under tax expenditures, given the impact of current national policy, employer sponsored health plan deductions should be reduced by $4.5 billion and health savings account deductions should be increased by $3 billion.

Also, please note this budget has public employees funding almost all of their own pensions, so you might get some push back on the unions from that.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

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That is from a previous proposal.  The current marijuana tax is a 25% sales tax.

I would suggest we list the revenue from the specific sales and excise taxes, and make the marijuana program spending apparent as well. This shouldn't be too hard - a lot of this information is already in this thread and I can help fill in the gaps where needed.