LC 2.28 Resolution to Establish the Budget of the Lincoln Government (Debating)

[lfromnj]

Aye. Obviously disagree with tax raises but as Peanut stated we do need some raises for the deficit. I do hope we can get some spending cuts to prevent further tax increases on Lincoln.

[Pyro]

Aye, overall this is a solid bill that protects the little majority of Atlasia. My one gripe is the gas tax not structured to be more progressive, so as to ensure that the payments are fair. I will ensure a bill to correct this mistake later on.

That is an excellent idea.

[lfromnj]

Aye, overall this is a solid bill that protects the little majority of Atlasia. My one gripe is the gas tax not structured to be more progressive, so as to ensure that the payments are fair. I will ensure a bill to correct this mistake later on.

How is it not already decently progressive?

The 2nd lowest bracket for lets say the lower middle class has a 1/3 marginal tax rate of the highest bracket.

[S019]

Nay. I don't like the idea of increasing taxes on households with <100k income. Or a gas tax. Both hurt the working and middle classes. I would support if you increase the taxes on the upper middle class/wealthy though.

I will say the raise on households with less than 100k income is of only 1 point, compared to 3 points on everyone above that. We sort of need to raise taxes on the middle class since we have a massive hole in the budget.

We can also cut spending and implement a sales tax

[Dipper Josh]

Aye

[Former President tack50]

The vote on the earlier amendment is now closed

Aye: 6 (tack50, Griffin, PSOL, Pyro, lfromnj, Dipper Josh)
Abstain: 0
Nay: 2 (thr33, SNJC)
Not voting: 1 (Zaybay)

So the amendment passes

[PSOL]

Amendment

PROPOSED TAXES

Excise Taxes
Gas:
Lowest 20% earners-5¢/g
Second lowest 20%- 15¢/g
Mid 40%-60%- 30¢/g
60-80%- 40¢/g
Upper 20%- 60¢/g


 
Diesel:
Lowest 20% earners-20¢/g
Second lowest 20%- 30¢/g
Mid 40%-60%- 50¢/g
60-80%- 60¢/g
Upper 20%- 75¢/g

Section II: Identification

1. For future purposes involving sales taxes, the Region of Lincoln will incorporate income into a form of identification
   a. Only applicable to gas and diesel taxes at this time
   b. Identification will be free and given and distributed at a local post office
   c. Information must be automatically changed after the annual time of tax filings

The following friendly amendment not only prevents a regressive taxation scheme that plagued the tax system of France—ultimately leading to the yellow vests—it also brings in more revenue to the Lincoln budget. I am free to talk about specifics and other questions at this time.

[Former President tack50]

Well, the person to decide if an amendment is friendly or not is the sponsor of the bill (in this case Pyro). Though I doubt he will oppose this.

Also, we need Encke (or Mr. R) to cost this.

[lfromnj]

WTF no this is just way too much government intrusion for the sake of income taxation with regards to gasoline. How is a rich person using a gallon of gasoline more polluting than a poor person using a gallon of gasoline?.

[S019]

I favor gas and diesel taxes, but not the income, is the person who puts gasoline in your car, supposed to ask you for your income, or if you don’t live in NJ, is the credit card thing on the gasoline “holder”, supposed to ask for your income, and how do you verify that, are you supposed to carry around pay stubs. How does this identification system  even work, as it is, this is too vague, and may lead to the above scenario. If all of that doesn’t happen, I agree with Coucnilor Lfromnj that having gas taxes as income taxes, makes no sense

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Amendment

PROPOSED TAXES

Excise Taxes
Gas:
Lowest 20% earners-5¢/g
Second lowest 20%- 15¢/g
Mid 40%-60%- 30¢/g
60-80%- 40¢/g
Upper 20%- 60¢/g


 
Diesel:
Lowest 20% earners-20¢/g
Second lowest 20%- 30¢/g
Mid 40%-60%- 50¢/g
60-80%- 60¢/g
Upper 20%- 75¢/g

Section II: Identification

1. For future purposes involving sales taxes, the Region of Lincoln will incorporate income into a form of identification
   a. Only applicable to gas and diesel taxes at this time
   b. Identification will be free and given and distributed at a local post office
   c. Information must be automatically changed after the annual time of tax filings

The following friendly amendment not only prevents a regressive taxation scheme that plagued the tax system of France—ultimately leading to the yellow vests—it also brings in more revenue to the Lincoln budget. I am free to talk about specifics and other questions at this time.

Since each bracket contains an equal portion of the population (the population is divided into 5 segments each containing an equal number of people), then one can simply add up the rates, divide by five to get an effective rate, and multiply by Lincoln's yearly gasoline consumption. This means that using a 'straight' analysis (namely, that each bracket consumes a roughly equivalent amount of gasoline), the effective rate is $0.30 for the gas tax and $0.47 for the diesel tax; compare that to the $0.50 and $0.70 rates in the amended version of the budget, and you can see that this proposal actually raises 60% (for the gas tax) and 67.1% (for the diesel tax) of what is raised in the current version of the budget. Of course, one could make the argument that the gasoline consumption within each bracket will not be the same; the poor take public transportation more than the rich, for instance (this brings up the question of how an income-based gas tax would work for local public transit). However, in order to generate the amount of revenue from the current $0.50 and $0.70 taxes, the gasoline distribution by bracket would have to be ridiculously skewed towards the highest bracket in an unrealistic manner.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Also, I have a few questions about the proposal:
1) How does this affect vehicles that are owned by businesses rather than individuals?
2) Are we talking per capita income or household income here? If a married couple consists of one person who works and one who doesn't, can the person who works take the other's ID card to bypass a higher tax rate?
3) Tying into 2), how is the ID verified at self-service pumps where paying at the register isn't necessary?
4) Is this identification requirement intended to go into effect immediately upon passage of the FY2019 budget?
5) If someone is unaware of the new law and goes to buy gas, will he/she be unable to do so?

[PSOL]

WTF no this is just way too much government intrusion for the sake of income taxation with regards to gasoline. How is a rich person using a gallon of gasoline more polluting than a poor person using a gallon of gasoline?.

The effect of setting a flat rate is going to have a muter reaction the more wealthy an individual is. 30¢ means more to a person on food stamps than a multimillionaire, and having such disparities unchecked is having a De Jure regressive position. On another front, we’ve seen that wealthier individuals mostly have less qualms about using their own personal vehicles than poorer residents using public transportation.

I favor gas and diesel taxes, but not the income, is the person who puts gasoline in your car, supposed to ask you for your income, or if you don’t live in NJ, is the credit card thing on the gasoline “holder”, supposed to ask for your income, and how do you verify that, are you supposed to carry around pay stubs. How does this identification system  even work, as it is, this is too vague, and may lead to the above scenario. If all of that doesn’t happen, I agree with Coucnilor Lfromnj that having gas taxes as income taxes, makes no sense

There will be a given, free-of-charge marking on a special I.D. whose whole purpose is to purchase these fuels. A similar model of identification exists in the transportation cards for a metro in any large city, ultimately the ease of carrying it around outweighs carrying cash. Furthermore, the card is renewed annually after each filing of tax reports and is automatically updated in tandem annually, so that should ease some of these concerns.

Also, I have a few questions about the proposal:
1) How does this affect vehicles that are owned by businesses rather than individuals?
2) Are we talking per capita income or household income here? If a married couple consists of one person who works and one who doesn't, can the person who works take the other's ID card to bypass a higher tax rate?
3) Tying into 2), how is the ID verified at self-service pumps where paying at the register isn't necessary?
4) Is this identification requirement intended to go into effect immediately upon passage of the FY2019 budget?
5) If someone is unaware of the new law and goes to buy gas, will he/she be unable to do so?

1.Currently nowhere in the Amendment deals with business transportation
2.It would be based on household income
3. All of our pumps have slots to pay with a card. Such an I.D. would work similar to a debit card, in which you put money into the account. With regards to checking income, an individual can check online to verify their status, changed annually with each tax filing.
4. No, after careful review it seems that there must be a transition period for easing into it. It would make sense to have it go into effect April 15th, 2021
5. The specifics of the law would obviously attract publicity on its own right, but there would be attempts to reach out to the public on the needed steps and specifics.

After careful consideration, I am withdrawing this amendment for a later period so as to fix

[PSOL]

Amendment

PROPOSED TAXES ON PERSONAL TRAVEL

Excise Taxes
Gas:
Lowest 20% earners-5¢/g
Second lowest 20%- 15¢/g
Mid 40%-60%- 30¢/g
60-80%- 40¢/g
Upper 20%- 60¢/g


 
Diesel:
Lowest 20% earners-20¢/g
Second lowest 20%- 30¢/g
Mid 40%-60%- 50¢/g
60-80%- 60¢/g
Upper 20%- 75¢/g

Section II: Identification

1. For future purposes involving personal transportation with the diesel and gas taxes, the Region of Lincoln will incorporate household income into a form of a card with specific identification
   a. Only applicable to gas and diesel taxes at this time
   b. Identification will be free and given and distributed at a local post office
       I. To all members of the household requesting one
       II. Failure to comply to paying for the correct tax brackets will lend a fee worth 15% of missed
            taxes expected
           1. Must be payed after each fiscal quarter
   c. Information must be automatically changed after the annual time of tax filings
   d. The card allows for the scanning of what exactly must be paid at the pump
   

Section III: Awareness

1. For the purposes of informing residents, the government of Lincoln will inform awareness of these changes in the following way
    a. Have all the personal transportation taxes be printed on an appropriate section of the official
        driver’s almanac of the respective areas of Lincoln, if such inter-regional deviations in the official
        almanac exists
     b. Have an official press interview for specifically informing the public of the nuances of the law.

Section IIII: Implementation Date

1. The following Amendment will be implemented later of the law as a whole
    a. The transition period ends at 05/15/2021.

The new changes to the amendment addresses concerns made by fellow legislators, and the GM, in several deficiencies in clarification. The changes provide a transition period, clarification on the passing of identification, and what specifically are the taxes targeting. On the last point, the changes made stress that only personal consumption is changed; taxes on public or private transportation, Work done in an employee vehicle, or anything of the sort is unaffected and remains at the previous set rate.

With these current changes, are there any questions and concerns about these changes or the amendment at-large that I have not addressed or have in an unsatisfactory fashion?

[Former President tack50]

While a worthwhile idea to discuss, this would probably be better as a separate piece of legislation rather than as part of the budget.

[PSOL]

While a worthwhile idea to discuss, this would probably be better as a separate piece of legislation rather than as part of the budget.

Fine, I hereby recant this amendment.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Posting this here also:

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

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

I'll finish doing the analysis for thr's extra bracket proposal tomorrow (preliminary estimate: it doesn't really change that much at all, at least compared to the current amendment, which has the top bracket at 0.33).

In the meantime, I found that the US Gov't Spending site has updated some of their FY2019 spending numbers, so healthcare should now be at 252.364 billion. I might go through later and see if any of the other numbers have changed since I last checked.

[Pyro]

Lincoln Council is now in Final Business Period

The Second Council of Lincoln will dissolve at Midnight EST July 16th

[Pyro]

I hoped for a final passage prior to the end of this Council session, however considering our present time constraints alongside the necessity for several additional legislative amendments prior to a final vote call, we will need to resume debate on the Budget Resolution next session following its re-introduction.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

The Philly Plan again shows it elected an inept chamber.

[Poirot]

Someone mentioned a sales tax. If it's debated in the next session, arguments for it could be that it's a more stable revenue than income tax which can fluctuate a lot with economic cycles, it's less punishing for savings and investments and it's better for economic growth.