IDS Budget and Tax Committee

[Yelnoc]

I have italicized statistics that I got from this Wikipedia article 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]

[Associate Justice PiT]

     ~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.

[Yelnoc]

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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I doubt it, given that actual non-zero figures are attributed to Florida, Tennessee, & Texas in the article.

[Yelnoc]

     I doubt it, given that actual non-zero figures are attributed to Florida, Tennessee, & Texas in the article.

Darn.  I have been looking through different pdf's on income taxes (from state websites) and I am beginning to think our quest for one figure for each state is much to simplistic.

[Badger]

     I doubt it, given that actual non-zero figures are attributed to Florida, Tennessee, & Texas in the article.

Darn.  I have been looking through different pdf's on income taxes (from state websites) and I am beginning to think our quest for one figure for each state is much to simplistic.

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.

[Yelnoc]

Alabama's (Personal) Income tax Rates:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

If your income range is $0 and over, your tax rate on every dollar of income earned is 6%.


Texas: No Personal Income Tax

[Yelnoc]

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.

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[Yelnoc]

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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

[Yelnoc]

     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.

Why is that?  We used real-life state data to do so.  I don't see how that precludes the existence of state level taxation in the IDS, especially when, as you pointed out, we certainly have states.  In fact, bills such as the Education devolution act (whatever the one we were talking about earlier was called) at least attempted to assign duties and thus expenditures to the states, which seems to necessitate the states having some mechanism to gather revenue.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

Why is that?  We used real-life state data to do so.  I don't see how that precludes the existence of state level taxation in the IDS, especially when, as you pointed out, we certainly have states.  In fact, bills such as the Education devolution act (whatever the one we were talking about earlier was called) at least attempted to assign duties and thus expenditures to the states, which seems to necessitate the states having some mechanism to gather revenue.

     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.

[Yelnoc]

     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.

Why is that?  We used real-life state data to do so.  I don't see how that precludes the existence of state level taxation in the IDS, especially when, as you pointed out, we certainly have states.  In fact, bills such as the Education devolution act (whatever the one we were talking about earlier was called) at least attempted to assign duties and thus expenditures to the states, which seems to necessitate the states having some mechanism to gather revenue.

     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.

Yes, our intent was to find our regions spending and revenue by adding up that of the states.  What I am saying is that we have no reason to assume that this money is going to the regional government but several to assume that the states are keeping it for their own programs.

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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

Why is that?  We used real-life state data to do so.  I don't see how that precludes the existence of state level taxation in the IDS, especially when, as you pointed out, we certainly have states.  In fact, bills such as the Education devolution act (whatever the one we were talking about earlier was called) at least attempted to assign duties and thus expenditures to the states, which seems to necessitate the states having some mechanism to gather revenue.

     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.

Yes, our intent was to find our regions spending and revenue by adding up that of the states.  What I am saying is that we have no reason to assume that this money is going to the regional government but several to assume that the states are keeping it for their own programs.

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.

[Yelnoc]

     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.

Why is that?  We used real-life state data to do so.  I don't see how that precludes the existence of state level taxation in the IDS, especially when, as you pointed out, we certainly have states.  In fact, bills such as the Education devolution act (whatever the one we were talking about earlier was called) at least attempted to assign duties and thus expenditures to the states, which seems to necessitate the states having some mechanism to gather revenue.

     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.

Yes, our intent was to find our regions spending and revenue by adding up that of the states.  What I am saying is that we have no reason to assume that this money is going to the regional government but several to assume that the states are keeping it for their own programs.

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.

The point of including the state level figures as a separate level would be to temporarily separate them from regional spending and revenue.  We need to figure out our regions debt level and budget history.  Once that is done, legislature can be passed so that the region assumes the responsibilities of the state government.  At that point, those figures will be needed to create the new regional budget.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

Why is that?  We used real-life state data to do so.  I don't see how that precludes the existence of state level taxation in the IDS, especially when, as you pointed out, we certainly have states.  In fact, bills such as the Education devolution act (whatever the one we were talking about earlier was called) at least attempted to assign duties and thus expenditures to the states, which seems to necessitate the states having some mechanism to gather revenue.

     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.

Yes, our intent was to find our regions spending and revenue by adding up that of the states.  What I am saying is that we have no reason to assume that this money is going to the regional government but several to assume that the states are keeping it for their own programs.

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.

The point of including the state level figures as a separate level would be to temporarily separate them from regional spending and revenue.  We need to figure out our regions debt level and budget history.  Once that is done, legislature can be passed so that the region assumes the responsibilities of the state government.  At that point, those figures will be needed to create the new regional budget.

     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.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

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.

[Yelnoc]

     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.

Why is that?  We used real-life state data to do so.  I don't see how that precludes the existence of state level taxation in the IDS, especially when, as you pointed out, we certainly have states.  In fact, bills such as the Education devolution act (whatever the one we were talking about earlier was called) at least attempted to assign duties and thus expenditures to the states, which seems to necessitate the states having some mechanism to gather revenue.

     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.

Yes, our intent was to find our regions spending and revenue by adding up that of the states.  What I am saying is that we have no reason to assume that this money is going to the regional government but several to assume that the states are keeping it for their own programs.

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.

The point of including the state level figures as a separate level would be to temporarily separate them from regional spending and revenue.  We need to figure out our regions debt level and budget history.  Once that is done, legislature can be passed so that the region assumes the responsibilities of the state government.  At that point, those figures will be needed to create the new regional budget.

     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.

I am just talking about temporary separation, so that we can find the budget history of the region.  Unfortunately, past laws involving taxes and appropriations were passed on top of the base figures.  Meaning, for instance, that the corporate tax of the region is in addition to the corporate taxes of the states.  So what we will see is a large surplus in the regional budget but a large deficit in the aggregate of the state budgets.

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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

[Yelnoc]

     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.

That assumption for spending was (as far as I am aware) made just for this project.  Unless that exists in a law, we can discount it and assume that said items were only paid for once, by the state governments.

Taxation is certainly a major problem.  We will have to pass a massive tax overhaul once we finish with this.

[Yelnoc]

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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

    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.

That assumption for spending was (as far as I am aware) made just for this project.  Unless that exists in a law, we can discount it and assume that said items were only paid for once, by the state governments.

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.

[Yelnoc]

    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.

That assumption for spending was (as far as I am aware) made just for this project.  Unless that exists in a law, we can discount it and assume that said items were only paid for once, by the state governments.

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 guess I wasn't clear.  I'm not talking about the overall direction of the committee.  What I am talking about is temporarily separating the two for the purpose of calculating the budget.  The "local government" figures will be added back into region spending.  Think about it this way; we have the "base spending & revenue" of the states.  Now we need to find the base spending and revenue of the region.  Then we can combine the two.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

That assumption for spending was (as far as I am aware) made just for this project.  Unless that exists in a law, we can discount it and assume that said items were only paid for once, by the state governments.

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 guess I wasn't clear.  I'm not talking about the overall direction of the committee.  What I am talking about is temporarily separating the two for the purpose of calculating the budget.  The "local government" figures will be added back into region spending.  Think about it this way; we have the "base spending & revenue" of the states.  Now we need to find the base spending and revenue of the region.  Then we can combine the two.

     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.

[Yelnoc]

     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.

That assumption for spending was (as far as I am aware) made just for this project.  Unless that exists in a law, we can discount it and assume that said items were only paid for once, by the state governments.

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 guess I wasn't clear.  I'm not talking about the overall direction of the committee.  What I am talking about is temporarily separating the two for the purpose of calculating the budget.  The "local government" figures will be added back into region spending.  Think about it this way; we have the "base spending & revenue" of the states.  Now we need to find the base spending and revenue of the region.  Then we can combine the two.

     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.

That may be so.  But if we aren't going to include the state government budgets in ours (co-opt them, you might say) then the region is reduced to leveling its own taxes to pay for its expenses.  Which leads us back to the current problem of having a massive corporate income tax (when put into perspective on top of state and federal taxes) and a series of excise taxes providing a large income for a very small budget (we built a pentagram- I can't think of any other expenses).