Liberal Politican Has An Epiphany
Rick Wartzman in the LA Times writes that a liberal Los Angeles politician got a clue. Yes that should be front page news, but lets at lease rejoice in the Easter miracle.Former Assembly Wally Knox is proposing a reform to the City's arcane gross receipts business tax. Instead of taxing a business for what it earns off the top, the tax would be on profits. This move could encourage more entrepeneurism cause everyone knows if your business is profitable, you can usually afford your taxes as opposed to if you're losing money.
Wartzman says that Knox - the guy who gave us overtime for people who don't work overtime - is hopeful that "if businesses here are more successful, they'll share their prosperity with their workers in the form of higher pay and better benefits."
That my friends, is the free market in action. No living wage law needed here. Kudos to Wally!
Posted by Mayor Sam @ 4/10/2007 12:15:00 AM
12 Comments:
Half-measures are worthless. You wouldn't build a bridge halfway to Hawaii, for example. Likewise, tinkering with the City's business tax is pointless. We need to REPEAL it.
And don't tell me we can't afford it. Last year, the City's tax revenues grew $717 million. The business tax produces around $350 million. We could have repealed it and still had $367 million more in revenues than the previous year.
Read my other tax reform proposals at MooreIsBetter.com.
You're right Walter but I still have to give Wally SOME credit for figuring it out to a degree. Its like watching a baby learn how to talk.
Correction: the business tax produced $421 million last year, so if we had repealed it, revenues would have been "only" $297 million greater than the prior year.
Then again, by repealing the business tax, we presumably would have attracted more businesses and sales here, and could have netting more than $297 million through increases in the sales tax and property taxes.
Let's not give Wally any credit. The timidity in this town is choking off and scaring away the one group that can create jobs: businesses.
Good jobs are important. You hear people bitching and moaning about "affordable housing," and they always focus on the "housing" part of the equation. They never note that, by driving away business, we lower the average income, which makes housing less affordable; the lower your income, the lower the quality and quantity of everything you can buy.
It kinda reminds me of the time Mayor Villaraigosa discovered that by reducing the fees for filming permits -- like magic -- more filming would take place in L.A. and -- like magic -- the City would end up with more revenue than the fees produced.
An annual epiphany certainly isn't anything to write home about, but it's a start.
AW its about all we can hope for around here.
Interestingly this will be true only when business are decent enough to declare all their true profits, but...
I suspect then Mayor Sam you can't give credit to the Mayor for supporting the concept in the same article?
Give the mayor credit for paying lip-service to the same idea? He has held office at City Hall since 2003. He has thus had four years to do something to help promote business in this city. And yet, he's off on yet another road trip. Oh yes, let's give him credit for this huge step on his part.
A correction is in order on your last post, Walter. The Mayor has been in office since 2005 (not 2003), but this doesn't negate the fact that he really hasn't done anything, which harms the city a great deal.
No, actually, it's not. The Mayor has been in office in City Hall since July 2003. He first took office as a City Council Member, having pledged not to run for Mayor. After he was elected to the Council, he ran for Mayor, and assumed that office in July 2005. He did as much for business when he was a Council Member as he has done as Mayor: nothing.
I have been a tax specialist for over 20 years and have filled out thousands of tax returns/forms/etc. Because the instructions the city provides in its tax reporting booklet are non existent I had to bring in a specialist to make sure I was not overpaying the tax. The City has no incentive to provide proper instructions for taxpayers.
Walter, technically we're both correct. I was speaking of his CURRENT office occupancy, which is what he was elected to in 2005.
Apparently, I misread your earlier post, "City Hall" being the operative phrase.
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