IDS Budget and Tax Committee

[Associate Justice PiT]

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

I hate to break it to you, but I already did this about a week ago (check page 3).  My figures are slightly off from yours though, so I think we may have to go back again  

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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

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. 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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Great job! Also, a $200 billion surplus seems a little too good to be true.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     From the Southeast Lottery Regulations,

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     If I am reading it right, education gets funds from 90% of lottery revenue & anything left unpaid for is handled by the Education Tax.

[Associate Justice PiT]

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?:

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     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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Education:
Base: $73.4 billion
Southeastern Educational Incentive Act: $3.5 billion
School Choice Initiative: $56.4 billion

Total: $133.3 billion

I realize I probably sound stupid but how did you come up with those numbers?

     It's actually a very good question. I used the enrollment figures in the infobox of this link.

     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?:

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     It seems to me that it should reduce the base, but I'm not sure by how much.

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.

     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.

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i luv u

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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Just a thought, what does everyone make of Section 1 of the School Choice Initiative?:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

     It seems to me that it should reduce the base, but I'm not sure by how much.

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.

     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.

You're right, it only cuts off funding to "schools" (presumably all levels of education).  All education programs not directly related to schools in addition to administration expenses would remain.  I guess we will have to figure out which sub-category of the education sector covers those sections and add it up across our states for the region total.  Or, to save us the trouble (and vastly improve our education system), we could pass a bill fixing the situation.

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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

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.

I'm beginning to think that we should do that before we try to calculate everything.  Otherwise, we are going to have to go back and do this all over again.

     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.

[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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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).

     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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.