The Imperial Dominion of the South's Legislature

[Associate Justice PiT]

     My apologies. Communicating oneself properly through type can be quite difficult. No matter how much practice you get, there are sometimes when you just can't make your point well enough.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I don't know why, but talking about business administration rights makes me transform into Super Libertarian. I'm glad that we were able to reach an agreement there.



     On the Blue Law Cessation and Alcohol Standardization Act: by the powers vested in me as Emperor of this region, I thus sign it into law.

     Be it resolved, X Emperor PiT

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I would point out that some time ago, the federal government jacked the minimum wage up to $12/hour. With that, businesses are really suffering around here. However, a more recent bill allows us to reduce miimum wage as low as $10.50/hour again....

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I am given a little pause by the opposition of my compatriots, though I do not think that I am wrong in signing this bill. I don't see any particular reason why the wages earned by an employee for time worked should vary depending on their recipience of what is essentially a voluntary contribution by a third party.



     On the Tips and Commission Independence Act: by the powers vested in me as Emperor of this region, I thus sign it into law.

     Be it resolved, X Emperor PiT

[Associate Justice PiT]

Emperor PiT, I submit a motion that this legislature recess until the new year, now that the elections are finished. We'll take up all the new business then. All else in favor?

     I have no objections. With you busy and SJoyce awaiting confirmation, we'd be pretty shorthanded to do anything.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Traditionally, we've only actually removed Legislators for inactivity when their inactivity was a serious impediment to the activity of the Legislature as a whole. After all, we're not here to cause stress and consternation.

     I remember a non-Senator once ran for PPT and was treated as a valid candidate. I can't imagine why we wouldn't do the same here.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I can't imagine what legislative body does not permit itself the ability to recess. We should probably create a formal recess option, as well as extend the inactive period needed to boot someone to 14 days, for the sake of clarity. I would also point out that the Standing Rules are not antiquated so much as they are ignored. For that matter, I don't think the Legislature has ever passed any regulation of its own proceedings that it has then followed.

     Viceroy was abolished since we found that it wasn't a terribly interesting office and was ultimately a fifth wheel in legislative proceedings. Things went much more smoothly just by having the Speaker conduct votes. We tried adding other duties to make Viceroy worthwhile, such as maintaining the regional rolls, but they didn't really help.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Thank you. I've been thinking we need to amend the Constitution to do that, but I have been sidetracked.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Looks good. Thanks, Bacon King.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Any more opinions on Bacon King's proposed amendment?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Okay. Anyone want to be speaker? Adam Griffin will have to come post in here if he wants to accept Bacon King's nomination.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Also, the Late-Term Abortion Restriction Act was passed, appropriating $10,000,000 for expanding safe-sex education programs and access to contraceptive services. We should come up with a plan toward that end ASAP.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I suppose this time is the right time, to choose someone to lead our Legislature. You have 72 hours to vote now. Let's go!

[ ] Adam Griffin
[ ] Ben Kenobi

[Associate Justice PiT]

     It's been three days and yet only three of the five Legislators have voted. Bacon King and Duke haven't. I see that Kenobi wins among the voting Legislators, 2-1.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     This reminds me, I should be putting the 2013 budget together. That won't take long, and it will give us an idea of where we stand.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I fear that an 8.5% business tax would negatively impact our ability to compete with other regions. We currently have a 5.8% business tax, which is already higher than that which exists in the Mideast.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I've crunched the numbers and it looks like we're $36 billion in the black this year. I'll do a formal write-up soon, as well as a determination of the exact contribution of personal income tax. Personal and corporate income tax together are $69.25 billion, so maybe we'll be able to handle abolition without needing to introduce any new taxes.

[Associate Justice PiT]

I don't know the current tax rates here, but I inherently oppose a flat tax simply because its regressive on our lower income citizens. I do favor lowering rates though if we can afford it, which it sounds as if we can having a $36 b surplus.

     I should have a more in-depth analysis up tonight, though I will point out that our current income tax is already very nearly flat. The top bracket of 6% comes at just $7,000 for single returns and $10,000 for joint returns.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I had forgotten, but we eliminated social security taxation. I don't know about state level programs, but the federal Social Security tax is a regressive tax, so if this is similar then that would help address Duke's concerns.

     As such, our surplus now stands at $12.1578 billion. Our total revenue due to combined personal and corporate income taxation is $69.25 billion. If we want to reduce them both equally, then we can brook an equivalent to a 4.8% flat rate.

     Breaking the income tax numbers down, $56.27 billion is personal income tax and $12.98 billion is corporate income tax. If you wanted to reduce only personal income tax, we could go as low as 4.55%. If you wanted to reduce only corporate income tax, we could go as low as 0.4%.

     The problem? I neglected Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico's total tax contribution is $19.04 billion. The site I use for these numbers does not include Puerto Rico, unfortunately. While income tax numbers and splits vary heavily from state to state, I can try and assume they're proportional in Puerto Rico. In that case, they pay $2.75 billion for personal income tax and $630 million for corporate income tax. The impact is fairly small, and I actually really should recalculate their share since I now know that social security taxes don't exist in this region. It would have negligible impact on the issue at hand, though. I merely suggest not venturing too close to the limits that I suggested.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I guess I'll get in touch with the GM on this and see what his take is.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I spoke to GM shua and he said that since our sales tax revenue is already so high (the benefit of Texas's success), we would only get about $14 billion of additional revenue from eliminating income tax. That leaves us $55 billion short. The rainy day fund gives us $50 billion, but we still have to cut $5 billion more.

     My suggestion is that we not dip into the Rainy Day Fund, or at least not empty it. If we roughly halve our corporate income tax to 3%, then that reduces revenue by $6.27 billion. Then we can reduce personal income tax to 5%, which will reduce revenue by $7.76 billion. Keeping the other suggested tax introductions and approximating the increased sales tax revenue as linear, we can get an extra $2.84 billion in revenue. This would leave us with a surplus of $970 million.

[Associate Justice PiT]

I think at the very least, we need to cut our corporate taxes to the levels of other regions. As it stands, it is more expensive for corporations subject to that tax to do business in the IDS, and I think that is something we need to change. I would be fine cutting our personal income tax to 5% as well assuming no one will be uncomfortable with a mere $970M surplus.

     The Mideast employs a progressive corporate tax, and we may consider doing the same. The problem is, that makes it difficult to figure what rates would be in line with theirs unless we just copied their tax rates.

     The size of the surplus is small, though if we have emergency spending needs then we can use the rainy day fund. I don't want to dip into that just for a tax cut, though, prompting my much smaller suggested cuts.

Can I get any support for 3 and 3, halving both rates with some spending cuts?

     In that case, we're still down $6.27 billion from corporate income, but now we're also down $27.16 billion from personal income tax revenue. We'll then get an additional $6.76 billion from sales taxes, leaving us $14.51 billion in the hole. Far from impossible to cover, but not trivial either.

     We also finished last year with a surplus of $4.22 billion, as I recall (exact number should be somewhere in my office thread, but I think that's right). We should decide what to do with that.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Spending cuts are always difficult to pass, since pretty much everything the government spends money on sounds good on paper, and everyone has their own pet projects. I would be interested in discussing spending cuts, though I sort of doubt that we will find $14 billion worth of them to agree on.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     The bill as passed would put us so deeply in the red that even if we emptied the entire Rainy Day Fund we would not break even. I think that discretion is the better part of valor and that we should wait until a better bill is passed.

     VETO

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I've already posted the 2013 budget in my office. We should pass that ASAP, in the same manner as we did the 2012 budget.