IDS Budget and Tax Committee

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for.

[Yelnoc]

     Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for.

So we multiply the tax paying portion of the IDS population by 5.8.  The question is, how many citizens of the IDS are taxpayers?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for.

So we multiply the tax paying portion of the IDS population by 5.8.  The question is, how many citizens of the IDS are taxpayers?

     According to ths, there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one).

[Yelnoc]

So, we currently have an epic surplus of $63,077,630,161.  Once the legislature elects a new speaker, one of us will have to write up an omnibus bill combine the two budgets.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I'm not sure how one would write such a bill, unfortunately. Perhaps say that we are counting all state spending & revenue as part of the region's spending & revenue for accountability purposes?

[Yelnoc]

     I'm not sure how one would write such a bill, unfortunately. Perhaps say that we are counting all state spending & revenue as part of the region's spending & revenue for accountability purposes?

Basically, though we would want to specify which portions from the state ledgers are being combined and which are being dropped.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I'm not sure how one would write such a bill, unfortunately. Perhaps say that we are counting all state spending & revenue as part of the region's spending & revenue for accountability purposes?

Basically, though we would want to specify which portions from the state ledgers are being combined and which are being dropped.

     I think we're only dropping the corporate tax portions. Should we drop state income taxes as well for the sake of simplicity?

[Yelnoc]

     I'm not sure how one would write such a bill, unfortunately. Perhaps say that we are counting all state spending & revenue as part of the region's spending & revenue for accountability purposes?

Basically, though we would want to specify which portions from the state ledgers are being combined and which are being dropped.

     I think we're only dropping the corporate tax portions. Should we drop state income taxes as well for the sake of simplicity?

That's what I was thinking.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     How about:

IDS Budget Combination Bill

1. For budgetary purposes, collection of revenue for state-level taxes and payment for expenditures due to state-level programs shall be handled by the regional government of the Imperial Dominion of the South.

2. No state in the Imperial Dominion of the South may levy an income tax on its citizenry.

[Yelnoc]

That looks good to me.  I would appreciate it if this was the first bill considered by the legislature once a new speaker is selected.

[Yelnoc]

Just as a reminder, we are going to have to calculate for Puerto Rico before we complete the combination.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Oh yeah, we never did that. Assuming we can't find anything, I think we could just approximate Puerto Rico's numbers by assuming they are the same per capita as those for the rest of the region.

[Badger]

     Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for.

So we multiply the tax paying portion of the IDS population by 5.8.  The question is, how many citizens of the IDS are taxpayers?

     According to ths, there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one).

Whoa, whoa, whoa here!

I would insist we use this calculation instead. For determination of income tax revenue.

[Yelnoc]

     Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for.

So we multiply the tax paying portion of the IDS population by 5.8.  The question is, how many citizens of the IDS are taxpayers?

     According to ths, there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one).

Whoa, whoa, whoa here!

I would insist we use this calculation instead. For determination of income tax revenue.

Fixed.  We're still 58 billion over.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for.

So we multiply the tax paying portion of the IDS population by 5.8.  The question is, how many citizens of the IDS are taxpayers?

     According to ths, there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one).

Whoa, whoa, whoa here!

I would insist we use this calculation instead. For determination of income tax revenue.

     When I posted that, the personal & corporate income tax rates were different, so I don't think that doing it that way would have been valid. Now that they are the same, doing it that way should be fine. However, that means that we will have to eliminate the $32.5 billion that we calculated for the regional corporate tax, since the $61.65 billion accounts for that.

[Yelnoc]

     Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for.

So we multiply the tax paying portion of the IDS population by 5.8.  The question is, how many citizens of the IDS are taxpayers?

     According to ths, there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one).

Whoa, whoa, whoa here!

I would insist we use this calculation instead. For determination of income tax revenue.

     When I posted that, the personal & corporate income tax rates were different, so I don't think that doing it that way would have been valid. Now that they are the same, doing it that way should be fine. However, that means that we will have to eliminate the $32.5 billion that we calculated for the regional corporate tax, since the $61.65 billion accounts for that.

Fixed again.  We still have over a $25 billion surplus.

For Puerto Rico, I was thinking we could just take the average of each state category and assign that figure to Puerto Rico's expenses and revenues.  Is that ok or does it need to be scaled to population?  Once we figure that out we can go through and combine the two budgets.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for.

So we multiply the tax paying portion of the IDS population by 5.8.  The question is, how many citizens of the IDS are taxpayers?

     According to ths, there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one).

Whoa, whoa, whoa here!

I would insist we use this calculation instead. For determination of income tax revenue.

     When I posted that, the personal & corporate income tax rates were different, so I don't think that doing it that way would have been valid. Now that they are the same, doing it that way should be fine. However, that means that we will have to eliminate the $32.5 billion that we calculated for the regional corporate tax, since the $61.65 billion accounts for that.

Fixed again.  We still have over a $25 billion surplus.

For Puerto Rico, I was thinking we could just take the average of each state category and assign that figure to Puerto Rico's expenses and revenues.  Is that ok or does it need to be scaled to population?  Once we figure that out we can go through and combine the two budgets.

     Scaling it to population would probably be wise. I am guessing that Puerto Rico is somewhat below average for population among states in the region.

[Yelnoc]

     Actually, we never added in the income tax stuff. We already have a ~5.8% income tax rate, which will certainly eliminate the gap when accounted for.

So we multiply the tax paying portion of the IDS population by 5.8.  The question is, how many citizens of the IDS are taxpayers?

     According to ths, there was 142 million tax returns filed in 2008, or 28.4 million in the region. I once estimated the average income of a citizen of the region at $40,000, which translates into a payout of $2,320/person, on average. Multiplying that with the 28.4 million taxpayers, I get $65,900,000,000/year? That seems rather high, though I suppose it makes sense when we aren't taking tax credits directly into account, though there are some provided for elsewhere under regional law that we have already calculate (Southeast Educational Incentive Act, for one).

Whoa, whoa, whoa here!

I would insist we use this calculation instead. For determination of income tax revenue.

     When I posted that, the personal & corporate income tax rates were different, so I don't think that doing it that way would have been valid. Now that they are the same, doing it that way should be fine. However, that means that we will have to eliminate the $32.5 billion that we calculated for the regional corporate tax, since the $61.65 billion accounts for that.

Fixed again.  We still have over a $25 billion surplus.

For Puerto Rico, I was thinking we could just take the average of each state category and assign that figure to Puerto Rico's expenses and revenues.  Is that ok or does it need to be scaled to population?  Once we figure that out we can go through and combine the two budgets.

     Scaling it to population would probably be wise. I am guessing that Puerto Rico is somewhat below average for population among states in the region.

I believe the population rankings go like:
Texas
Florida
Georgia
North Carolina
Tennessee
Alabama
South Carolina
Louisiana
Puerto Rico
Mississippi
Arkansas

I don't know how you would weight for population though.  :/

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Average population for a state in the region is 7,352,934 people. The population of Puerto Rico is 3,967,288. So to estimate Puerto Rico, we should divide the regional numbers by 11 & then multiply them by (3967288/7352934), which gives us $17,270,000,000/year for its expenditures & $24,960,000,000/year for its revenues.

     Also note that the state-level income tax numbers are now zero following the passage of the IDS Budget Combination Bill. I calculated Puerto Rico's revenue taking that into account.

[Yelnoc]

     Average population for a state in the region is 7,352,934 people. The population of Puerto Rico is 3,967,288. So to estimate Puerto Rico, we should divide the regional numbers by 11 & then multiply them by (3967288/7352934), which gives us $17,270,000,000/year for its expenditures & $24,960,000,000/year for its revenues.

     Also note that the state-level income tax numbers are now zero following the passage of the IDS Budget Combination Bill. I calculated Puerto Rico's revenue taking that into account.

Great.  Look through the budget on page 14 and, if you don't see any mistakes, I will go ahead and combine it.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I get $311.7 billion for state spending & $531.9 billion for state revenue after the adjustments have been made. Regional numbers are basically correct. We should probably recalculate the tax break for nuclear plants since we reduced the corporate income tax rate, though the difference would be so small that it's not really worth it.

[Yelnoc]

     I get $311.7 billion for state spending & $531.9 billion for state revenue after the adjustments have been made. Regional numbers are basically correct. We should probably recalculate the tax break for nuclear plants since we reduced the corporate income tax rate, though the difference would be so small that it's not really worth it.

Updated.  And yeah, the nuclear adjustments can wait until after the combination.  Is there anything else?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I think we've covered everything that will have a non-trivial effect on the final budget.

[Badger]

I admit I've lost total track of the calculations here (and that's a compliment to the number and detail of posts here). If possible, could we post a summarized budget with calculations noted herein so I can review/grade it all at once please?

Again, great job guys.

[Associate Justice PiT]

I admit I've lost total track of the calculations here (and that's a compliment to the number and detail of posts here). If possible, could we post a summarized budget with calculations noted herein so I can review/grade it all at once please?

Again, great job guys.

     As I understand it, this is essentially final, though the state-level income tax hasn't been zero'd yet there.