Office of the Game Moderator

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Thank you for the appointment! I am pleased to be returning to the GM team.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Here are the Fremont budget numbers (also posted in the budget thread). Will be updated with the gaming/drug taxes soon if I can figure those out.

UPDATE: All done.

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[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Forgot to add the more detailed spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ls1tNRgYMFqwRDdPF_MwyMc5CHOOrqzNi5FDlPWEwb4/edit?usp=sharing

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

All right, income tax revenues are finally done. The rest of the revenues will hopefully be done tomorrow. These were formulated from the 2016 IRS report, and have been corrected for population growth, Puerto Rico, and change in unemployment since the last budget was costed (without these multipliers, the results come out to 1.648 trillion, which is in line with Truman's estimate from the fall). Total income tax revenue is 1.721 trillion.

The main source of my troubles was determining the proper tax return percentage breakdowns. A shift of a small fraction of a percent causes shifts of several tens of millions of dollars, particularly with regards to the upper brackets. In order to prevent the revenue from being too high compared to last year I was forced to assume a smaller percentage of income earners in the top bracket.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Corporate tax returns:

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Payroll taxes (including RRPH Healthcare tax)

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Excise taxes/royalties (including changes made in the SB 2018-317, the Revenue Enhancement Act). I see Mr. R has already included the changes from the Mine Time Act and a few other things that Truman had in his numbers (in his post from January 5), so I excluded them from this category.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

(reserved; estate tax analysis and various comments on last year's budget will be placed here)

Edit: The numbers themselves are done, I'm still waiting on a few answers from Mr. R about his estate tax numbers, which he published above.

Edit 2: Alright, estate tax numbers:

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

There was an 'other revenues' section in the FY2018 budget that I wasn't sure what to do with; since FUTA and the estate tax weren't included as separate sections in last year's budget, and I calculated them individually this year, I subtracted those values from the 'other revenues' section this year. I assume most of that value is the federal reserve's income.

I discovered a small mistake in my income tax numbers (was using an old multiplier where I erroneously used a population growth multiplier rather than a taxpayer-base growth multiplier). That has been fixed here.

A cursory glance at Mr. R's numbers from December reveals a net spending decrease of 54.236 billion (this is with the fixed estate tax numbers), bringing total spending to 4107.47 billion. With current revenue numbers (subject to change if I discover any more mistakes), that gives us a deficit of 549.66 billion, significantly down from the 873.23 billion deficit last year. Seems a bit too good to be true (although in all fairness so I will be double-checking these numbers in the next few days.

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[Fmr. Representative Encke]

The analysis of illegal immigration pre- and post-Come Out of the Shadows (COOTS) can be found in the GM's newspaper.

Upon request from Governor YoungTexan, I will now be commencing work on the Southern budget.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

A Few Words on the Southern Budget

I apologize for taking so long to get this done. I have been very busy over the past few weeks and to add to that, the Southern budgets and budget threads for the past two years were very obscure and lacking in detail.

First, a few notes about the Southern budgetary process. Apparently, a 'base value' is calculated by summing the revenues and spending of each of the South's constituent states. According to old threads from 2015-16, these base values are calculated using data from the sites http://usgovernmentspending.com and https://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com, with the basic categories maintained. A few quick run-throughs of the data demonstrate that the values used in past budgets ignored local spending/revenues, and only factored in state spending/revenues into the baseline. This has been maintained in the below image, which contains calculated baseline values with economic multipliers (since Southern unemployment overall is actually higher than it is in real life, this actually decreases the baseline revenue).

There are a few issues and discrepancies between these numbers and those in previous budgets. For one, it seems that whoever did the 2017 and 2018 budgets never went back and updated the spending baselines, which were first calculated in 2016. As such, the baselines have been identical for all three years, even as economic conditions and population have changed. This is a bit annoying, because it means that prior budgets have been playing with the baselines in ways that don't accurately reflect the 'up-to-date' state numbers; for instance, in S 18.3-9 (Amendment to the Southern Budget), the education budget was increased to 120 billion. This is smaller than the 'correct' 2019 (or even the 2018) baseline of 136.77 billion. Likewise, many other categories in the budget are actually underfunded right now, using the 2018 budget as a guide; revenues baselines were updated in 2018, but not spending baselines.

Secondly, I noticed that there was a huge discrepancy between my income tax numbers and the income tax numbers that were reported in the 2017 and 2018 budgets. By my calculation, state income tax revenues should total 110.18 billion dollars; however, in 2017 and 2018, the income tax section listed only $13.6 billion dollars in revenues. A glance at the 2016 budget made me realize the issue: in 2016, the income tax numbers were broken down into personal and corporate categories, with the first of these totaling 81 billion and the second totaling 13.6 billion. In the 2017 budget, whoever did the numbers apparently eliminated the income tax section, perhaps due to the Southern repeal of the personal income tax; however, this should not have been done, since the baselines are state figures, not regional ones. So, the South has been underreporting its income tax revenues for the past two years.

Thirdly, there are discrepancies in the Social Insurance baseline category that can't be explained away so simply. My calculations show 73.68 billion in revenues in this category, while the 2016 and 2017 budgets listed this category as 197.9 billion dollars. This is a bit bizarre and resulted in a rather high total revenue estimate of 708.5 billion in the 2016 budget, higher than either the 2017 or 2018 budgets (due to their exclusion of the state income tax baseline). I would appreciate any comments from those who did work on the 2016 budget.

In general I feel like the budgetary process for the last two years has been on autopilot, with little concern for how numbers were calculated or what they meant. Apparently, the Southern region is absorbing all revenues collected by the states, as well as all spending. Meanwhile, the revenues are still dependent on state income tax rates. So the South is essentially letting the states set their own rates, and then collecting all of their revenues (meanwhile, local government revenues have not been absorbed by the region for some reason). Thus, the 'baselines' that provide the bulk of the South's revenue are actually dependent on factors that are controlled by the states, which are NPCs. This seems a bit odd to me and it seems like it is worth discussing in more detail. In particular, the South is changing their spending numbers at will (e.g. the alteration of 'other spending' to 20 billion dollars in S 18.3-9, against a prior baseline of 25 billion), so they are basically taking the states' revenues and then slashing spending in areas that were supposed to be bare-minimum spending transfers to begin with. A rather egregious example of this is S 18.4-27 (Hurricane Relief Act), which takes 22 billion from the 'Other Spending' category. The Other Spending category should NOT be for discretionary spending, people! If you want discretionary spending, make another category for it!

Alterations to revenue numbers from last year will be discussed (overall, changes to spending and revenue are minor) in a separate post.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Another issue I have just found:

The 2017 budget (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=260408.0) lists a corporate income tax base of 13.6 billion, and then states that regional corporate income tax is 5%, yielding a regional revenue of of 22.7 billion. A quick calculation using RL corporate tax revenues reveals that this is a reasonable value (2019 numbers reveal 25.15 billion in regional corporate tax revenues). However, for some reason, the corporate income tax base was not added to the regional corporate tax, which means that the revenue numbers in 2017 and 2018 were underestimated by an amount equal to the baseline (13.6 billion).

So corporate income tax revenues actually total 38.75 billion (and total income tax revenues total 135.33 billion), which is helpful in reducing some of the baseline deficit.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

So I just had a brief conversation with PiT, where he confirmed that my methodology was correct.

I have checked and rechecked the numbers, and am still getting 70-ish billion in social insurance revenues, so the only reasonable explanation is that the 197.9 billion figure reported in prior budgets was a mistake. This means that Southern revenue has been hugely overestimated for the past few years, and is the primary cause of the current deficit.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

For the benefit of onlookers, I will post any comments made in the Southern budget thread here as well. I have filed a bug report for the government revenue website so hopefully those empty tables will be fixed soon (not only for the southern budget, but for future reference if, say, Fremont wants to absorb state spending as well).

Alright, as I mentioned privately to Wulfric and YT, the revenue numbers site is now not displaying any revenue data at all; the tables have been blank for the past day or so (meanwhile, the spending tables are still available for some reason). As a result I can't provide detailed baseline revenues for 2016-2018 until the site's data comes back.

As a substitute, I used a Southern yearly population multiplier, as well as in-game unemployment numbers from those years to estimate the corrected revenues from 2016-2018.

Fortunately, the situation is not as dire as this year's baselines would suggest; correcting revenues leads to a massive reduction in the surplus reserves, but the surplus still exists, and is around 22 billion dollars.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

K. Southern budget stuff is done.

K. Here is a list of (hopefully complete) budget changes (both spending and revenue) that I have calculated. Some of the numbers are rather rough, but really make no difference because new spending is dominated by the 8 billion naval infrastructure bill.

Bill	Title	Cost	Notes
S 18.1-25	Naval Infrastructure Spending Act	8,000,000,000	One-time
S 18.1-17	Rough Bulldog Act	8,000	One-time
S 18.1-10	Development of Foreign Language Programs in Schools Act	10,000,000	One-time
S 18.1-12	Prison Reform Act	170,000,000	One-time
S 18.1-12	Prison Reform Act	-22,000,000	Annual savings
S 18.1-11	Animal Welfare Act (commemorative tokens)	-360,000	One-time
S 18.1-11	Animal Welfare Act (commemorative tokens)	-360,000	One-time
S 18.3-23	Raccoon Resistance Act	20,000,000	One-time
S 18.4-40	Jeb Stuart Medical Research Gift Act	500,000	One-time
S 18.4-27	Hurricane Relief Act	22,000,000,000	One-time; factored into discretionary
S 18.22	Southern Young Athlets Assistance Act	5,000,000	Annual
S 17.5-16	Celebrating Our Southern Region Act	-3,200,000	One-time
S 18.18	Sales Tax Exemption Act	7,450,000	Annual
S 18.1-22	School is Cool Act	5,000,000	Tax
S 18.1-30	Opiate Overdose Prevention Act	2,000,000	One-time
S 18.1-30	Opiate Overdose Prevention Act	-829,000,000	Tax
S 19.1-8	Protecting the Health and Safety of Babies and Women	-13,219,000	Tax
S 18.1-13	Real ID Compliance Act	14,000,000	One-time
S 18.1-13	Real ID Compliance Act	-20,000,000	Apply to RL state numbers
S 18.3-7	Inmate Resources Act	165,000,000	depends on incarceration
S 19-1.14	Online Lottery Act	-310,000,000	Annual
S 18.3-16	Southern Tax Relief Act	860,265,114	Annual Tax Credit
S 19.1-17	Southern Gambling Act	-505,484,070	BASE (annual)
S 19.1-17	Southern Gambling Act	-1,342,332,000	5% for online+casinos (subject to increase as more casinos built)
S 18.4-21	Tax-Exempt HSAs Act	19,000,000	Apply to Alabama RL numbers
S 18.3-25	Teaching Incentives Act	76,231,200	Yearly dependent on education majors
S 18.4-13	Better Skools Act	-18,000,000	Apply to RL state numbers
S 18.4-11	Go South Young Man Act	735,504,000	FY2019 Only
S 18.1-20	Hunting and Fishing Act	0	Tied to inflation; check back in 3 years
S 18.1-33	More Obsolete Crimes Deletion Act	30,000,000	Apply to WV revenue numbers
S 18-4.17	Ban Ban Act	-21,477,000	Yearly dependent on uranium sales
S 17.5-5	More Doctors and Hospitals Act (surcharge)	3,684,000	Apply to state revenue numbers
S 17.5-5	More Doctors and Hospitals Act (prop. tax)	145,000,000	Apply to ad-valorem
S 17.5-17	Asset Seizure Reform Act	310,725,000	Apply to state revenue numbers
S 19.1-22	Everglades Environmental Protection Act	10,000,000	to FL
S 18-4.16	Fast Act Amendments Act	3,000,000	one-time
S 18.1-19	One More Year Act	-8,000,000	net
TOTAL SPENDING INCREASE		$7,498,935,244

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Putting this here since it was an officially requested analysis from Devout Centrist:

Parental Leave Act of 2019: Cost Analysis

From NAICS data, there are 11432180 businesses with between 1 and 4 employees, 1698743 businesses with between 5 and 9 employees, 741725 businesses with between 10 and 19 employees, and 445906 businesses with between 20 and 49 employees. Fitting a curve to the data and integrating yields 67 million employees working for businesses with fewer than 50 employees, 46% of the total of 145 million. (as an useful quality check, the total integration yields nearly the same number of income tax returns listed in separate IRS data).

The average wage per employee for 'very small' and 'small' businesses (those with 1-20 and 20-99 employees, respectively) works out to around $40,000; 16 weeks of paid leave works out to around $12,500 per employee.

3.8 million babies were born in the US last year. 96.9 percent of families have at least one employed parent and 61.9 percent have both parents employed, so roughly 6,030,000 individuals would be eligible for maternity or paternity pay. (aside: if we take 6,030,000*12,500, we get 75.375 billion dollars, corroborating Devout Centrist's sources )

If we assume these births are distributed evenly across employees of all businesses, we have 6,030,000*0.46=2,773,800 employees of small businesses eligible for leave. 2,773,800*12,500*0.75 =  a total cost of 26.00 billion dollars.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Fremont Regionalization Initiative

There have been a few conversations on FremontCord recently about the process of absorbing essential state services (as outlined in 'Resolution recognizing autonomy of the states', and the effect that this would have on the budget. Meanwhile, the South and Lincoln have assumed state services by using 'baselines' derived by summing the state spending numbers from their member states. As discussed in my earlier post 'A Few Words on the Southern Budget,' these state spending baselines were taken from a particular source, usgvoernmentspending.com. Since no one involved in the budget process in the past few years had bothered to recalculate the baselines (and most people were entirely unaware that this site provided the basis for their numbers), the figures have diverged somewhat from RL in a number of areas in both the South and Lincoln (although Lincoln never passed an actual budget for either FY2017 or FY2018). A brief look through pre-reset records reveals that the practice of using this site, and only summing the numbers in the 'state' column, rather than the 'local' or 'total' column, was first started during Badger's stint as GM, when he introduced this method to the regions.

The South has been giving Fremont some grief over the past few months about not regionalizing essential services (including education), which was why 'Resolution recognizing autonomy of the states' was passed. However, during a discussion with Sestak, Truman, Scott and others on FremontCord, we discovered that the numbers given on usgovernmentspending are direct spending numbers and do not account for intergovernmental spending. As a result, these regions are actually not funding K-12 education to the same extent that the RL states are, since K-12 education is entirely included in the 'local' category on the USGS site, and the 'local' category is not taken into consideration when determining budget baselines. IRL, it is true that almost all direct K-12 spending is performed at the local level, but it is also true that a large portion of the funding comes from the states, something that isn't reflected in the USGS site.

This discovery prompted me to comb through the USGS site and determine exactly which areas of funding are listed as 'state' services and which ones are listed as 'local' to fully examine the extent to which the regions are or are not funding 'essential services.' Since Fremont is currently active in attempting to determine how best to regionalize services without creating an uneven tax burden, I started with the states in that region. Here are the results. (note: I will go into more detail about what each of these categories means in another post)

(EDIT: Also here is the more detailed state-by-state spreadsheet. I'll do the South next, since YT has that audit thing.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iW2RSWSnhBMaTFZPD-MHy8dRtAHrxfFEwwdghnN79r4/edit?usp=sharing)

Note: All amounts are in millions of dollars			Total			Percent State/Local
Category	Subcategory	Detail	State	Local	Total	State	Local
Pensions	Sickness and Disability	Workers Compensation	7521.2	0	7521.2	100.00	0.00
	Old age	Employee Retirement	82129.1	16761.6	98890.9	83.05	16.95
	SUM		89649.9	16761.6	106411.5	84.25	15.75
Healthcare	Medical service (Seniors)		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Medical service	Federal Intergov't - Health and Hospitals	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Health	6743.2	19288.3	26031.4	25.90	74.10
		Hospitals	31348.7	38221	69570	45.06	54.94
	Public Health services	Current Ops - Environmental Health	1583.4	0	1583.4	100.00	0.00
	R and D Health		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Health n.e.c		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Vendor Payments (Medical)	Federal Intergovernmental - Vendor Payments for Medical Care	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Vendor Payments for Medical Care	177594.5	2375.6	179969.9	98.68	1.32
	SUM		217269.6	59884.9	277154.6	78.39	21.61
Education	Pre-primary - Secondary	Elementary+Secondary	2551	143012.5	145563.6	1.75	98.25
	Tertiary	Higher Education	82601.8	17635.3	100237	82.41	17.59
	Not definable by level	Federal Intergov't - Education	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Education - Other	16897	0	16897	100.00	0.00
		Libraries	139.6	3785.4	3925.1	3.56	96.44
	Subsidiary services		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	R and D Education		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Education n.e.c		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	SUM		102189.5	164443	266622.7	38.33	61.68
Defense	Veterans	Veterans Services	108.7	0	108.7	100.00	0.00
Welfare	Family and children	Federal Intergov't - Public Welfare	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Cash assistance payments	661.7	7021.2	7682.6	8.61	91.39
		Welfare other cash assistance	1891.2	0	1891.2	100.00	0.00
		current ops - Public welfare, vendor payments for other purposes	2118.1	0	2118.1	100.00	0.00
		Other Welfare	16938.7	10925.7	27864.7	60.79	39.21
	Unemployment	Federal Intergov't - Employment security admin	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Unemployment Comp	10491.6	0	10491.6	100.00	0.00
		Unemployment Comp - Special	0.3	0	0.3	100.00	0.00
		Employment Securiy Admin	1200.4	0	1200.4	100.00	0.00
		Other Insurance trust benefits	6575.1	0	6575.1	100.00	0.00
		Other Insurance trust payments	151.4	0	151.4	100.00	0.00
	Unemployment Trust		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Housing	Federal Intergov't - Housing and Community Development	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Housing and Community Development	1611.3	15523.8	17135.3	9.40	90.60
	Social Exclusion n.e.c		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	R and D social protection		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Social Protection n.e.c		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	SUM		41639.6	33470.8	75110.5	55.44	44.56
Protection	Police services	Federal intergov't - police and safety	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Police Protection	4313.1	30694.4	35007.4	12.32	87.68
	Fire Protection services	Fire Protection	0	15487.4	15487.4	0.00	100.00
	Prisons	Corrections	15243.1	9375.7	24618.6	61.92	38.08
	R and D Public order		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Public order and safety n.e.c	Federal Intergov't - Protective and Inspection	84.8	45.5	130.3	65.08	34.92
		Protective Inspection and Regulation	3845.6	2335	6180.3	62.22	37.78
	SUM		23486.6	57937.9	81424.3	28.84	71.16
Transportation	Transport	Federal intergov't - Air Transportation	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Federal Intergov't - Highways	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Air Transportation (airports)	1070.6	7626.3	8696.9	12.31	87.69
		Highways	25751.3	23900.2	49651.3	51.86	48.14
		Sea and inland port facilities	78	2249	2327	3.35	96.65
	Transit	Federal Intergov't - Transit Utilities	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Transit	2634.6	25386.9	28021.2	9.40	90.60
	SUM		29534.3	59108.5	88643.1	33.32	66.68
General Gov't	Executive and legislative organs, finance	Financial Administration	8138.1	5535	13673.3	59.52	40.48
		State legislative services	950.8	0	950.8	100.00	0.00
		Other gov't admin	1151.3	7866.4	9017.6	12.77	87.23
		general public buildings	1325.7	2773.6	4099.2	32.34	67.66
	Law Courts	Judicial and Legal	9557.4	10311.7	19868.9	48.10	51.90
	General services	Federal intergov't	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	SUM		21123.1	26486.8	47610	44.37	55.63
Other Spending	Basic research		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	General economic, commercial and labour		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting	Federal Intergov't - Natural Resources, Agriculture	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Federal Intergov't - Natural Resources	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Natural Resources	9580.4	3914.1	13494.4	71.00	29.01
	Fuel and Energy	Federal Intergov't - Electric Utilities	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Federal Intergov't - Gas Utilities	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
		Electric power	767.8	32396.9	33164.8	2.32	97.68
		Gas Supply	36.7	952.5	989.1	3.71	96.30
	Mining, Manufacturing and construction		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Communication		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Other industries	Liquor store expenditure	1294.8	301.8	1596.6	81.10	18.90
	R and D Economic Affairs		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Economic Affairs n.e.c	Miscellaneous commercial activities	522.5	6171.6	6693.9	7.81	92.20
	Waste management	Solid waste management	416.3	5775.5	6191.8	6.72	93.28
	Waste water management	Sewerage	584.2	16282.4	16866.7	3.46	96.54
	Pollution abatement	Federal intergov't - Sewerage	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Protection of biodiversity and landscape		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	R and D ennvironmental protection		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Environmental protection n.e.c.		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Housing development		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Community Development	Parking Facilities	6.8	799.5	806.4	0.84	99.14
	Water supply		196.8	28074.3	28271.2	0.70	99.30
	Street lighting		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	R and D Housing and community amenities		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Housing and community amenities n.e.c.		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Recreational and sporting services	Parks and rec	1621.5	13896.2	15517.7	10.45	89.55
	Cultural services		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Broadcasting and publishing services		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Religious and other community services		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	R and D Recreation, culture and religion		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	Recreation, cultlure and religion n.e.c.		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	R and D general public services		0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	General public services	Other gov't admin	9792.6	19455.9	29248.6	33.48	66.52
	Transfers of a general character	Federal intergov't	0	0	0	0.00	0.00
	SUM		24820.6	128020.5	152840.9	16.24	83.76
TOTALS			549821.9	546114	1095926.3	50.17	49.83

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Lincoln spending numbers are all done. Note that these are spending changes since the last budget was passed. Revenue numbers will be up shortly, as well as RL spending baselines.

Bill	Title	Cost	Notes
L505	Youth Development and Empowerment Act[1]	77,069,000	Yearly
L507	Age-Appropriate Curriculum for the Betterment of Children Act	unknown	Initial funds taken from Kindergarten budget; current status unknown
L513	No Child Marriage Act	-780,057	Yearly
L603	Reasonable Limitations Act (Fines)	-26,000,000	Yearly; eliminated in 2018, reinstituted in 2019
L603	Reasonable Limitations Act (+10% funding to HSAs w/free contraception)	1,513,000,000	Yearly
L6.5.1	Flint Emergency Relief Act (federal grant)	-765,000,000	One-time
L6.5.1	Flint Emergency Relief Act (regional match)	765,000,000	One-time
L601	Education Act Amendment Bill 2017	68,596,881,812	Yearly
L601	Education Act Amendment Bill 2017 (property tax)[2]	-35,000,000,000	Yearly
L6.4.3	Law Enforcement Act 2017[3]	327,000,000	Yearly
L7.1.1	Lincoln Parks and Recreation Bill of 2017	3,000,000,000	One-time
L7.4.2	LincolnRail Act of 2017[4]	5,000,000,000	One-time (?)
L7.5.1	Mandatory Vaccination Act of 2017[5]	-27,247,500	One-time
L7.3.1	Department of Regional Security Act	65,000,000	Initial; current value unknown
L9.10.5	Lincoln Infrastructure Renewal and Maintenance	30,500,000,000	Seems to be one time
L10.4.1	Lincoln Gun Control Act of 2018 (fines)	-8,623,000	repealed in December 2018
L10.4.1	Lincoln Gun Control Act of 2018 (licensing costs)	0	was to go into effect in 2019
L10.16.5	Lincoln Prison Reform Act (allocated)	155,000,000	One-time
L10.16.5	Lincoln Prison Reform Act (inmate wage increase)	4,465,910,000	Yearly
L10.25.4	Soft Drug Legalization and Taxation Act (Other)	-579,204,000	10% sales tax
L10.25.4	Soft Drug Legalization and Taxation Act (Cannabinoids)	-1,251,828,000	10% sales tax
L10.26.5	The Gun Violence Protection Act	50,000,000	One-time
L11.4.2	Game Show Credits and Taxes Act	7,071,000	For 2019; will increase in subsequent years
L11.11	Support for Orphans and Widows of those who died in actual combat act	1,224,736	Yearly (dependent on combat deaths)
L11.17	Police Body Camera Act [7]	803,870,377	One-time
L11.22	Making Life Easier for Veterans Act (public land discount)	3,892,111	Yearly with variations
L11.22	Making Life Easier for Veterans Act (eliminate fees)	26,095,000
L12.9	Improving Education in Lincoln Act	91,433,268	Substitute teacher pay
L13.06	Education is Good Early Act	1,868,400,000	universal Pre-k (50%), yearly
L14.6	The STEM Act	0	TBD by availability of funds
L14.9	Finding True North Act (personal tax credit)	164,738,994	2018 and 2019 only
L14.9	Finding True North Act (personal tax credit, STEM))	47,280,091	2018 and 2019 only
L14.9	Finding True North Act (personal tax credit)	200,000	First year only (very rough estimate)
L15.3	An Act for Lincoln's Farms	5,000,000	One time, further funding TBD
L15.6	Easier Transport For All Act[9]	476,000,000	First year only
L15.9	The Hunting Codification Act (licensing)	-107,433,000	For 2019, based on hunter statistics
LC 1.8	Pharmaceutical Price Transparency Act	unknown	fine determined by inspector general
LC 1.13	Smart Energy Act (Class I, III, IV)	11,865,596	for 2019; subject to change
LC 1.13	Smart Energy Act (Class II) [10]	973,125,000	for 2019; subject to change
LC 1.14	The Rail Investment Act	negligible
TOTAL		80,243,950,832

[1]6050 sub-county municipal governments, 654 counties, 2 reps per council,      
estimated 60% of college age; average tuition and matriculation of 9180 and 400 dollars, respectively      
[2]source: MikeWells      
[3]avg salary of law enforcement=$65,400; 5000 new officers hired      
[4]after the construction is complete, 5000 workers will be retained; salaries must be accounted for      
[5]100,000 children age 2 were not vaccinated in 2015      
[6]Prison inmates given $6/hr wage, $3 paid by gov't; states in Lincoln currently provide hourly wages      
of roughly $0.50/hr; 600% increase in pay from current; 40-hr workweek assumed      
[7]Estimates derived from my previous cost analysis of FT 3-06 in 2017;assumes regional gov't pays 100%      
[8]public land discount      
[9] verrrrry rough estimate based on BART's budget      
[10]number of solar installations increasing rapidly; full 5000 subsisdy assumed      

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Here are the 2019 RL spending baselines for states in Lincoln. These serve as a guide for where funding levels are in real life, but don't necessarily need to be followed exactly. However, the spending numbers in the 2018 budget are in fact loosely based on these (or rather, they were taken from the South's budget template and modified arbitrarily).

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Revenue numbers are below. Previous GMs did not use the regional population multiplier to scale down their estimates for the gas and diesel taxes so those were too high in prior budgets. Meanwhile it seems that, from current data, cannabis, automobile, luxury, and property tax revenues were somewhat underestimated.

In total there are 509 billion dollars in revenue, while there are currently 690 billion dollars in spending (assuming the spending baselines are kept constant from last year's), leading to a deficit of 181 billion dollars. Keep in mind that there was supposedly a 122 billion dollars surplus in 2016, but this was largely due to the errors in the gas/diesel taxes, which led to a reported 78 billion in extra revenues that should not have existed. Also, the education budget is mysteriously low compared to RL.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Can the unionization rates in Atlasia be shown? Specifically broken down by industry, as a whole, and by membership of each union in Atlasia.

I will release a report on this after my finals are over and after I finish analyzing Pyro's tax plan. That should be sometime next week.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Preliminary Analysis of Pyro's Tax Plan

The following contains some analysis of Pyro's tax plan, which he suggested to me via Discord a little over a week ago. The plan contained:

[1] corporate tax brackets of 5% (100K-1M), 10% (1M-10M), and 15% (10M+),
[2] a 30% cap on itemized deductions for households making over $250,000,
[3] equivalent treatment of capital gains and income,
[4] estate tax brackets of 15% (10M-50M) and 20% (50M+),
[5] a 2% tax on alcohol and tobacco products,
[6] a carbon tax akin to Fremont's (already passed in the legislature),
[7] a 1% financial transactions tax on all stock trades,
[8] a 5% tax on covered liabilities for institutions with 50B+ in total assets
[9] a 10% increase to the luxury tax (previously at 15%)
[10] a 1% wealth tax levied on the top 0.1%

Combined, items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10 generate roughly 171.9 billion dollars in revenue (for reference, the Lincoln deficit is currently around 244 billion). Items 7 and 8 are much, much harder to quantify without more details about the nature of these proposals (which should probably have their own detailed bills). In particular, the suggested 1% FFT seems rather high. Sweden's famous FFT was of similar magnitude, had the result of pushing most trading overseas, and generated less than 5% of initial revenue estimates in any given year.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Analysis of the last two parts of Pyro's tax plan.

Note that, following Mr. R's concerns, Pyro altered the covered liabilities fee to a tax on 5% of gross income derived in Lincoln by financial institutions with combined total assets greater than $250 Billion. Negative economic effects of the FTT have been taken into account in that estimate.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

New Lincoln tax plan (from Pyro/Tack ?)

This new plan, shared with me on Discord today by Tack, would make the following tax changes:
[1] Increase the third tax bracket by 1 percent, and the top three brackets (4,5, and 6) by 3 percent.
[2] Increase the gas tax to $0.50/gallon
[3] Increase the diesel tax to $0.70/gallon
[4] Increase the luxury tax to 30%
[5] 10% alcohol and tobacco taxes
[6] Increase the property tax brackets to 0%, 5%, 11%, 18%, 23%, and 28%

I've done 1,2,3,4 and 5. Item 6 will take a bit longer. However, I'd advise whoever thought up item 6 to reconsider... the previous brackets were 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5%, while RL property tax rates are usually somewhere in the 0 to 2% range, so the suggested rates are ridiculously excessive.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

More Lincoln Property Tax Stuff

I wasn't happy with my rough property tax estimate that I originally did for the Lincoln budget so I decided to root around for some more data and try to get a better estimate (and one that could be applied consistently without a lot of guesswork). Granted, there is still plenty of guesswork (particularly  in assessing the median value of a home within each bracket), but it's still an improvement.

The new assessment results in an estimate that is 19.335 billion dollars more optimistic than my initial one. The deficit in the last budget amendment was 83.62 billion; this change brings that down to 64.29 billion.



These property taxes are already rather high; if you look at the 'yearly tax per household' column, you can see how much a household with the median property value in each bracket would pay per year. Compare this to the values for the RL states in Lincoln:



At the third bracket for Lincoln (100K-250K) we're already looking at values exceeding that of New Jersey, which has the highest property taxes in the nation. If the current property tax rates were doubled, as was proposed, then this would bring the annual tax burden for people in the second bracket (50K-100K) above that of New Jersey. Not sure that that's a good idea.

In any case, if one were to raise the brackets to those proposed (0-1-3-5-7-9 or 0-2-4-6-8), then one would simply apply the relevant multiplier to the numbers displayed in the table above. Doubling the tax for all brackets, for instance, would double the revenue. Both proposals would more than get rid of the deficit, assuming no negative effects. I'll be looking at existing research to try to quantify or otherwise determine possible side effects of large property tax increases.

Up next: thr's extra income tax bracket (as discussed on Lincolncord) and the single-payer estimate