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April 17, 2001
5:46 PM   RSS feed for this thread Subscribe

Texas gets good deal on Bush tax plan.. my state and many others lose....Do I move to Texas or pay more to avoid it?
posted by Postroad (7 comments total)

Pay more. Pay whatever it takes . . .
posted by aladfar at 6:24 PM on April 17, 2001


That's a great photo they have there of resident Bush.
posted by DragonBoy at 8:12 PM on April 17, 2001


In any given year's budget, one state will ::cough:: "win" under whatever system of measurement a pressure group wants to gin up, and the other 49 states will comparatively "lose." Whether the measurement actually means anything is questionable, particularly in this case, where each tax filer's true circumstances will vary wildly from person to person. Also note that the main reason New York is supposedly in last place is because a tax break is being taken away from the rich, just like liberals want.

The allegations of "loss" are fictional anyway; it's only a question of which state's residents will get more savings than others. Rather like when Democrats claim that a budget is being cut when all that's occurring is a smaller increase than they want.
posted by aaron at 10:12 PM on April 17, 2001



At the end of the article the big culprit is the Alternative Minimum Tax. That obscene piece of tax arcana should be indexed for inflation at the minimum or ideally eliminated.

The AMT is the result of a poor decision in the Reagan administration. It's very complex and many future victims are unaware that they will have to file under it.
posted by shackbar at 1:18 AM on April 18, 2001


You can check out the means, medians, and distributions (in pdf format) in this document from the Citizens for Tax Justice. You really can't examine this question until you look at all of the measures of central tendency and the distribution of cuts across the population. Of course, the media ain't gonna provide that kind of info, so you'll just have to examine the numbers yourselves (they do teach statistics for modern life in the high schools now, don't they?).

Remember, only you can prevent others from lying to you with statistics.
posted by iceberg273 at 8:08 AM on April 18, 2001


Wait, because New York has a relatively high income tax and Texas has none, New Yorkers have to pay more taxes? No kidding. That's not the federal government's fault.
posted by daveadams at 8:55 AM on April 18, 2001


Rather like when Democrats claim that a budget is being cut when all that's occurring is a smaller increase than they want.

that's not exclusive of the Democrats. rather, it's the basis for the way Congress and the President define such things as 'cuts,' 'surplus,' and 'deficit' when dealing with the Federal budget. it's something both major parties do.
posted by tolkhan at 9:21 AM on April 18, 2001


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