Yet, yesterday our state government whipped up a budget that depends on estimated revenue increases of 4 billion dollars to make it balance. Sounds fishy to me. How will our taxes increase that much when we have less people here and we have less people here earning money? And we have scheduled tax cuts coming, (not really tax cuts, just a return from the "temporary" hikes of the past few years). And I seem to remember a few months ago hearing that tax revenues had already jumped an astonishing 6 billion dollars. That's a 10 billion dollar increase in revenues in a decidedly bad economy, if the other reports are to be believed. What is the truth? We spend less, make less, and have less, but our revenues are increasing that much. I call bullshit.
I don't know the statistics anymore, but at one time auto sales were the biggest source of sales tax revenue in the state, and I think that's probably still the case. Car sales have increased over last year, but projected sales are still way less than many years previous to our current recession. Granted cars are more expensive now, but only marginally more in the past few years. How will an increase in revenue come from that source? Retail stores like grocery stores and department stores have suffered many losses and many buildings that once generated millions in tax revenue are locked and produce nothing now, and to hear it told Mom and Pop stores that generate sales tax are going and in many cases long gone. Wal-mart is still rolling and Target and a few other big retail outfits are still busy, but their sales haven't increased or if they have, it isn't by any huge amount, so they can't be responsible for the increase in revenue. Car registrations are also down, and their cost is slated to return to 2007 levels which are nearly half what they have been, so that revenue will be considerably less.
Unemployment in the state is considerably higher than other states and the number of workers paying income tax has declined in the past few years. Unemployment is not expected to go down for a few years so income tax will not increase. And, though many say corporations don't pay taxes, (they actually do), California corporations expect lackluster sales and revenues for the foreseeable future, so they won't be collecting taxes at the usual rates. They also won't be paying the so-called rich as much money, so that income tax base, (which was the biggest percentage of income tax collected), is going to be less.
Where is the Ten billion dollars coming from? Fuzzy math maybe? I know Governor Brown said he would not sign a bull shit budget and he rejected the last one, but this one seems must be total bullshit. they haven't cut much of anything that they hadn't cut before. And last week we were in dire straights according to everyone involved.
So you tell me how this works please.
