Posted by
Playful Walrus on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 3:19:40 PM
In more news of the obvious, falling corporate profits means less tax revenue in California, the Los Angeles Times headline reports over an article by staff writer Evan Halper.
California's budget problems deepened today as the state reported that tax receipts plummeted nearly $1 billion last month due to plunging corporate profits.
The news comes as the state moves closer to the July 1 deadline for lawmakers to close California's budget gap, which had earlier been estimated at $16.5 billion. There is little agreement in the Capitol about how to go about doing that.
Democrats have been calling for multibillion-dollar tax increases. Republicans have signed pledges vowing never to vote for new revenue, demanding instead that the budget be balanced with steep spending cuts.
The Dems aren’t just calling for tax increases – they are calling for new taxes. All sorts of new taxes.
So I’ve come up with my own. Since falling corporate profits mean less tax revenue for California, thus forcing legislators to make budget decisions they’d rather not, and scaring children enough they go on picket lines to protest “cuts” (usually reductions in planned spending increases), we should encourage corporations not to engage in such behavior (falling profits). Let’s implement a “Corporate Profit Decrease Tax” as a way of filling in the gap and, at the same time, discouraging corporations from paying less in taxes due to lower profits.
Hey, it makes about as much sense as most of the new taxes and increases the California Dems are proposing.