Miscellaneous from NPR

Buchanan identified studies that most taxpayers don't know how much tax they truly are paying. Here is an estimate. Payroll taxes are 18.7% of income and other taxes such as the add-on to one's telephone bill work out to be 5.4% income. Thus, taxes are about a quarter of one's bill.

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I have long believed that college student loans should be replaced by a share of the income after college. A group is doing just that. Although I don't understand why they end after ten years, an arbitary period. If the graduate goes into teaching for the first ten years and then becomes an investment banker versus the reverse. I more see a middle-aged person paying for, or contributing to, a young person's college education. They would pay ten percent of their income for as long as that person lived, funding their retirement. The Tell Me More scenario was someone who started teaching in Mississippi at $31,000.00, who would then pay ten percent of their income for ten years.

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Sadly, although Egyptians are often blogging and tweeting about the problems in the country and fifteen million out of seventy-eight million have access to the web, the government remains autocratic. Some cases, they have helped and gotten international attention, in many cases other wise.

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I blogged about the role of share holders in a modern corporation, sadly often none. Companies would send out a proxy ballot with just one candidate for each position. Now, big share holders who have held three percent of the company for three years will have access. Of course, that is far short of what I advocated.

Service Tax on a referendum in Maine

I spoke earlier about states taxing various miscellaneous items and introducing new fees to avoid unpopular general taxes. Maine will vote on a tax bill that will tax many services including birthday celebrations, dry cleaning and shoe repair. Of course, all items should be subjected to a sortition tax.

Small Excise Taxes and Fees in Europe

The States are not the only entities that are looking into small excise taxes and fees to balance their budgets. European governments are as well, often clothing them as badness taxes. They include Finland and Denmark taxing junk food. And governments are finding they have to refund taxes on business; France is taxing sea food (invertebrates) so as to give a rebate on fuel tax for fisherpersons. The V.A.T. tax is 19.8 percent in Britain this year and slaighted to go beyond 20 ercnet.

And France is introducing a carbon tax, Britain is taxing airline tickets, billing it as good for the environment.

Reference

Saltmarsh, Matthew, "Nicked at Every Turn" The New York Times, Thursday March Eighteenth, Volume CLIX, No 54,983, Page B1,B4

Excise Taxes and Fees versus general Taxation

At the beginning of the year, NPR has a good summary of States choosing specific taxes versus a general tax increase like a n increase sales tax across the board or a property tax increase. Of course, the alternative is a unique tax for each item, determined by sortition jury. This was the first posting I made to this blog.