taxes

RALEIGH (May 14) – The tax reform plan announced by state Senate Republicans last week is just another charade designed to make people think they are actually reducing taxes, the Libertarian Party of North Carolina state chair said in a statement today.

“Calling it the Tax Fairness Act and claiming it's the largest tax cut in state history is misleading at best,” said J.J. Summerell. “Taxes are inherently unfair. The only difference between taxes proposed by Republicans and Democrats is which special interest group is going to benefit and which is going to pay.”

A new survey of business climate ranks Raleigh in the nation’s top ten for small businesses.

Triangle Business Journal today is noting Raleigh made the top 10 list for the Best Cities for Business, 2013. Raleigh-Durham got an A in this year’s survey, up from a B last year.

This information comes from the United States Small Business Friendliness survey and here’s a link to the Thumbtack.com interactive map. You will see three areas in NC are shown, Raleigh-Durham, Winston-Salem, and Charlotte.

http://www.thumbtack.com/survey#2013/cities

The survey contacted over 7,000 small business owners to discover the best states for the operation of small businesses today. Topics included how easy it was to start a business and ranged through “ease of hiring, regulatory burdens, and available training and networking opportunities for business owners.”

Conservatives, especially the true believers that now populate the NC General Assembly, are fond of quoting Adam Smith, the 18th century Scottish moral philosopher and political economist. They love the quotes, but the content escapes them.

Smith wrote in "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations",
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." Smith went on to observe, "But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less render them necessary."

Every time one of our Republican legislators goes to an ALEC seminar or meets behind closed doors with ALEC representatives to write laws, they are conspiring against the public ... and corporations are always the direct beneficiaries.

Mr. Voller says he talked about his delinquent taxes on the campaign trail, so maybe I'm the only one who missed it. In any case, Republicans will be able to exploit this situation every time the new Democratic Party chair opens his mouth. So I ask two questions to those of you who were more personally involved in various campaign events: Did you already know about this? And if so, why the hell didn't you say something?

From WRAL: 7:00 p.m. - LIVE: State of the State address by Gov. McCrory,

from Policy Watch: / Progressive Pulse:
http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2013/02/18/what-to-look-for-in-tonights-s...

Good commentary on GOP push to reduce or eliminate personal income tax in favor of consumption tax(es) and questioning whether Gov. McCrory will address the issue in his State of the State speech tonight.

Economist-for-hire Arthur Laffer - the man behind the General Assembly's plan to eliminate the personal & corporate income taxes - headlined an event in Raleigh last night with members of the American Legislative Exchange Council. Under the Dome did a piece on the event that's worth the read.

It is important for us in terms of our competitive posture with other states... Senate Leader Phil Berger, Jan 17, 2013

TWO THOUSAND TWELVE was a difficult year for public investments in North Carolina. We saw even more cuts to vital services on which the entire state depends, and the inadequate funding so many of our schools and other public structures have suffered through since the start of the Great Recession has become the new baseline by which some NC lawmakers will judge future spending decisions.

Recently, the Campaign to Fix the Debt, to which Peter G. Peterson is a major donor, sent out an email (with a very revealing picture) to its major supporters. The picture showed a bevy of Wall Street CEOs standing in the NY Stock Exchange, ringing the bell to begin a day’s trading and surrounded by “Fix the Debt” signs. Although the Campaign’s supporters want to appear moderate, seeking to pair spending cuts with new revenue, they are not.

As shown by Americans for Tax Fairness
(http://www.americansfortaxfairness.org/blog/2012/10/26/do-you-really-tru...), thirteen of about 80 CEOs and companies that signed a letter pressing Congress to “Fix the Debt” have drained tens of billions of dollars from the federal tax system and thus placed the main burden on other taxpayers. Six companies signing the letter advocate tax amnesty for corporate profits in offshore tax havens.

No stranger to promoting austerity for tens of millions of Americans, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, to which Peterson himself has contributed $458 million (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/03/austerity-war-peter-peterson_n_...), depicts the federal budget as a crisis in desperate need of draconian reactions. But in survey after survey, Americans oppose cutting Medicare and Social Security. Even a recent national tour, titled “America Speaks” and supported largely by Peterson’s foundation, met with audiences that rejected its aims, including its claim that Americans favor raising the retirement age to 69—a claim falsely reported (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/28/deficit-hawk-survey-false_n_662...) by “America Speaks” to the Bowles-Simpson “deficit commission.”

Peterson, formerly a hedge fund mogul, gives millions to promote austerity in the social safety net, so that millionaires and especially billionaires like him can pay taxes disproportionately low compared to their wealth. He and fellow plutocrats are pushing for a “grand bargain” in the up-coming lame-duck session of Congress in order to slash Medicare and Social Security in exchange for small increases in federal revenues. The latest iteration of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, to which Peterson is a major donor, is chaired by former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, a corporatist Democrat, and former New Hampshire Republican senator Judd Gregg, another corporatist.