IDS Budget and Tax Committee

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

As far as revenues go, we should probably average up all the tax rates from different states rather than base it off Georgia; otherwise we will be severely in debt.  And I have a full schedule today and tomorrow; hopefully by Wednesday I will find time.

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.

[Yelnoc]

     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.

As far as revenues go, we should probably average up all the tax rates from different states rather than base it off Georgia; otherwise we will be severely in debt.  And I have a full schedule today and tomorrow; hopefully by Wednesday I will find time.

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.

Meh.  Laws can be repealed.  If my interpretation of that initiative is correct, it is utterly nonsensical.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

As far as revenues go, we should probably average up all the tax rates from different states rather than base it off Georgia; otherwise we will be severely in debt.  And I have a full schedule today and tomorrow; hopefully by Wednesday I will find time.

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.

Meh.  Laws can be repealed.  If my interpretation of that initiative is correct, it is utterly nonsensical.

     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.

[Yelnoc]

     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.

As far as revenues go, we should probably average up all the tax rates from different states rather than base it off Georgia; otherwise we will be severely in debt.  And I have a full schedule today and tomorrow; hopefully by Wednesday I will find time.

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.

Meh.  Laws can be repealed.  If my interpretation of that initiative is correct, it is utterly nonsensical.

     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.

How about you take dictatorial powers for the night and delete in from the wiki?  No one will be any the wiser.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

As far as revenues go, we should probably average up all the tax rates from different states rather than base it off Georgia; otherwise we will be severely in debt.  And I have a full schedule today and tomorrow; hopefully by Wednesday I will find time.

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.

Meh.  Laws can be repealed.  If my interpretation of that initiative is correct, it is utterly nonsensical.

     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.

How about you take dictatorial powers for the night and delete in from the wiki?  No one will be any the wiser.

     Heh. Inconvenient laws get disappeared in this region? Seems like this place is becoming more imperial all the time.

[Badger]

     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.

As far as revenues go, we should probably average up all the tax rates from different states rather than base it off Georgia; otherwise we will be severely in debt.  And I have a full schedule today and tomorrow; hopefully by Wednesday I will find time.

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.

Meh.  Laws can be repealed.  If my interpretation of that initiative is correct, it is utterly nonsensical.

     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, adding up the real life FY 2011 spending of the 10 IDS states combined (again, we can skip PR for now ) 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.........

[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

[Brandon H]

     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.

As far as revenues go, we should probably average up all the tax rates from different states rather than base it off Georgia; otherwise we will be severely in debt.  And I have a full schedule today and tomorrow; hopefully by Wednesday I will find time.

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.

Meh.  Laws can be repealed.  If my interpretation of that initiative is correct, it is utterly nonsensical.

     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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

As far as revenues go, we should probably average up all the tax rates from different states rather than base it off Georgia; otherwise we will be severely in debt.  And I have a full schedule today and tomorrow; hopefully by Wednesday I will find time.

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.

Meh.  Laws can be repealed.  If my interpretation of that initiative is correct, it is utterly nonsensical.

     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.

[Badger]

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!

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?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     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.

     If you drill down the defense category, you find the bulk of the spending goes to G85, which appears to be miscellaneous veterans' services. 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.

[Yelnoc]

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?

[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.

[Yelnoc]

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.

Wait...Kentucky's not....

Damn.

[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.

[Yelnoc]

     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.

Right now I don't even know.  I'll do it again tomorrow, or if not then by Sunday.

[Badger]

     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.

[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.

[Badger]

     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.

[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.

[Yelnoc]

     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.

Yes, they have been referenced numerous times in the Southeast alone.  I would guess they are a bit like America's larger counties when comparing Atlasia to the States.

[Yelnoc]

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.

[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.

[Yelnoc]

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

[Yelnoc]

Phew!  The leg work is done.  Now we can begin the arduous task of syncing the above budget with our region's legislative history.