Updated charts of flights and passengers for Wichita and the U.S. Data from Bureau of Transportation Statistics through March 2015. Click charts for larger versions.
The arguments presented in the following essay by Frederic Bastiat, written in 1845, are still in use in city halls, county courthouses, school district boardrooms, state capitals, and probably most prominently and with the greatest harm, Washington.
A PETITION
From the Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns, Sticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, and Extinguishers, and from Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of Everything Connected with Lighting.
To the Honourable Members of the Chamber of Deputies.
Open letter to the French Parliament, originally published in 1845
Gentlemen:
You are on the right track. You reject abstract theories and have little regard for abundance and low prices. You concern yourselves mainly with the fate of the producer. You wish to free him from foreign competition, that is to reserve the domestic market for domestic industry.
We come to offer you a wonderful opportunity for your — what shall we call it? Your theory? No, nothing is more deceptive than theory. Your doctrine? Your system? Your principle? But you dislike doctrines, you have a horror of systems, as for principles, you deny that there are any in political economy; therefore we shall call it your practice — your practice without theory and without principle.
We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation.
This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a respect that he does not show for us
Frederic BastiatWe ask you to be so good as to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull’s-eyes, deadlights, and blinds — in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed the country, a country that cannot, without betraying ingratitude, abandon us today to so unequal a combat.
Be good enough, honourable deputies, to take our request seriously, and do not reject it without at least hearing the reasons that we have to advance in its support.
First, if you shut off as much as possible all access to natural light, and thereby create a need for artificial light, what industry in France will not ultimately be encouraged?
If France consumes more tallow, there will have to be more cattle and sheep, and, consequently, we shall see an increase in cleared fields, meat, wool, leather, and especially manure, the basis of all agricultural wealth.
If France consumes more oil, we shall see an expansion in the cultivation of the poppy, the olive, and rapeseed. These rich yet soil-exhausting plants will come at just the right time to enable us to put to profitable use the increased fertility that the breeding of cattle will impart to the land.
Our moors will be covered with resinous trees. Numerous swarms of bees will gather from our mountains the perfumed treasures that today waste their fragrance, like the flowers from which they emanate. Thus, there is not one branch of agriculture that would not undergo a great expansion.
The same holds true of shipping. Thousands of vessels will engage in whaling, and in a short time we shall have a fleet capable of upholding the honour of France and of gratifying the patriotic aspirations of the undersigned petitioners, chandlers, etc.
But what shall we say of the specialities of Parisian manufacture?Henceforth you will behold gilding, bronze, and crystal in candlesticks, in lamps, in chandeliers, in candelabra sparkling in spacious emporia compared with which those of today are but stalls.
There is no needy resin-collector on the heights of his sand dunes, no poor miner in the depths of his black pit, who will not receive higher wages and enjoy increased prosperity.
It needs but a little reflection, gentlemen, to be convinced that there is perhaps not one Frenchman, from the wealthy stockholder of the Anzin Company to the humblest vendor of matches, whose condition would not be improved by the success of our petition.
We anticipate your objections, gentlemen; but there is not a single one of them that you have not picked up from the musty old books of the advocates of free trade. We defy you to utter a word against us that will not instantly rebound against yourselves and the principle behind all your policy.
Will you tell us that, though we may gain by this protection, France will not gain at all, because the consumer will bear the expense?
We have our answer ready:
You no longer have the right to invoke the interests of the consumer. You have sacrificed him whenever you have found his interests opposed to those of the producer. You have done so in order to encourage industry and to increase employment. For the same reason you ought to do so this time too.
Indeed, you yourselves have anticipated this objection. When told that the consumer has a stake in the free entry of iron, coal, sesame, wheat, and textiles, “Yes,” you reply, “but the producer has a stake in their exclusion.” Very well, surely if consumers have a stake in the admission of natural light, producers have a stake in its interdiction.
“But,” you may still say, “the producer and the consumer are one and the same person. If the manufacturer profits by protection, he will make the farmer prosperous. Contrariwise, if agriculture is prosperous, it will open markets for manufactured goods.” Very well, If you grant us a monopoly over the production of lighting during the day, first of all we shall buy large amounts of tallow, charcoal, oil, resin, wax, alcohol, silver, iron, bronze, and crystal, to supply our industry; and, moreover, we and our numerous suppliers, having become rich, will consume a great deal and spread prosperity into all areas of domestic industry.
Will you say that the light of the sun is a gratuitous gift of Nature, and that to reject such gifts would be to reject wealth itself under the pretext of encouraging the means of acquiring it?
But if you take this position, you strike a mortal blow at your own policy; remember that up to now you have always excluded foreign goods because and in proportion as they approximate gratuitous gifts. You have only half as good a reason for complying with the demands of other monopolists as you have for granting our petition, which is in complete accord with your established policy; and to reject our demands precisely because they are better founded than anyone else’s would be tantamount to accepting the equation: + x + = -; in other words, it would be to heap absurdity upon absurdity.
Labour and Nature collaborate in varying proportions, depending upon the country and the climate, in the production of a commodity. The part that Nature contributes is always free of charge; it is the part contributed by human labour that constitutes value and is paid for.
If an orange from Lisbon sells for half the price of an orange from Paris, it is because the natural heat of the sun, which is, of course, free of charge, does for the former what the latter owes to artificial heating, which necessarily has to be paid for in the market.
Thus, when an orange reaches us from Portugal, one can say that it is given to us half free of charge, or, in other words, at half price as compared with those from Paris.
Now, it is precisely on the basis of its being semigratuitous (pardon the word) that you maintain it should be barred. You ask: “How can French labour withstand the competition of foreign labour when the former has to do all the work, whereas the latter has to do only half, the sun taking care of the rest?” But if the fact that a product is half free of charge leads you to exclude it from competition, how can its being totally free of charge induce you to admit it into competition? Either you are not consistent, or you should, after excluding what is half free of charge as harmful to our domestic industry, exclude what is totally gratuitous with all the more reason and with twice the zeal.
To take another example: When a product — coal, iron, wheat, or textiles — comes to us from abroad, and when we can acquire it for less labour than if we produced it ourselves, the difference is a gratuitous gift that is conferred up on us. The size of this gift is proportionate to the extent of this difference. It is a quarter, a half, or three-quarters of the value of the product if the foreigner asks of us only three-quarters, one-half, or one-quarter as high a price. It is as complete as it can be when the donor, like the sun in providing us with light, asks nothing from us. The question, and we pose it formally, is whether what you desire for France is the benefit of consumption free of charge or the alleged advantages of onerous production. Make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you ban, as you do, foreign coal, iron, wheat, and textiles, in proportion as their price approaches zero, how inconsistent it would be to admit the light of the sun, whose price is zero all day long!
Kansas legislative and executive leaders must realize that a shift to consumption taxes must be accompanied by relief from its disproportionate harm to low-income households.
While Kansas legislative leaders and the governor praise the shift from income taxes to sales taxes, they ignore the severely regressive effect of sales taxes in Kansas. That is, a sales or consumption tax affects low-income families in greatest proportion relative to their incomes. The primary reason for the harshness of the Kansas sales tax is its application to food purchased in grocery stores. Few states tax food, and many of those that do apply a lower tax rate to food.
During the debate over a proposed sales tax increase in Wichita last year, I gathered data from the U.S. Census Bureau regarding expenditures on various categories for five different levels of household income. My findings were that if the city raised sales tax by one cent per dollar, the lowest income class of families would experience an increase nearly four times the magnitude as would the highest income families, measured as a percentage of after-tax income. Others produced similar results. This is the regressive nature of sales taxes.
At the national level the Fair Tax is a program whereby income taxes are replaced by consumption taxes. Proponents believe it would be a positive factor for economic growth. In recognition of the regressive nature of sales taxes, the Fair Tax plan includes a “prebate” to compensate households for the sales tax paid on necessities like food. In effect, there would be no tax on food and other necessities, up to the poverty level.
During the legislative session this year, Kansas Legislative Research told legislators that increasing the sales tax from 6.15 percent to 6.50 percent would generate $164,200,000 in additional revenue to the state. This implies that a one percent increase in the sales tax rate would generate about $469 million in revenue. (This is based on static analysis, and therefore does not account for the changes in behavior that the higher sales tax would induce, however large or small the effect.)
Effect of sales tax on consumers of different income levels. Click for larger version.It’s thought that the present sales tax on food results in about $390 million in tax collections. While these two values — 469 and 390 — are not equal to each other, the $469 million figure is close to the gap between revenues and expenses. (The tax bill the legislature passed will raise about $400 million, but it is widely believed the governor will have to make an additional $50 million in cuts.)
So what would have happened if the legislature had raised the sales tax by one cent per dollar and eliminated the sales tax on food? The answer is the sales tax in Kansas would be less regressive.
I modified my worksheet to allow for adjustment of the sales tax rate for general purchases, and for food separately. I gathered the results for three scenarios and present the results in a chart. I use the sales tax rates that Sedgwick County residents would experience. This includes a one cent per dollar county-wide tax in addition to the statewide rate. (Most counties and cities add to the statewide rate. The unweighted average sales tax rate for Kansas cities is 7.835 percent, based on Kansas Department of Revenue figures.)
Kansas sales tax effects by income quintile, three scenarios. The vertical distance between the lines is a measure of the degree of regressivity. It is larger for lower income households. Click for larger version.The blue line, labeled “Sales tax at 7.15% on all purchases” is the current tax in effect in Sedgwick County. Note that the lowest quintile of households pay nearly seven percent of their after tax income in sales taxes. For the highest quintile the value is less than two percent.
The gold line (“Sales tax at 7.50% on all purchases”) represents the rates that will be in effect after July 1. Note that the vertical distance between the blue and gold lines is larger for low-income households than for high-income households, again illustrating the regressive nature of sales taxes.
The red line (“Sales tax at 8.15%, food at 0%”) illustrates the situation had the legislature raised the sales tax by one cent per dollar and eliminated the sales tax on food. Notice that the vertical distance between the red and gold lines is greatest for lower-income households, and becomes less as income increases. This means that under this policy, the sales tax is less regressive. But the Kansas Legislature did not do this. Instead, it implemented a sales tax changes that increases its regressive nature.
Kansas has a food sales tax refund program. It has been altered several times in recent years. Even if households can — and do — claim it, it doesn’t cover their likely cost of sales tax on food. At a rate of 7.50 percent, the lowest quintile of households pay an estimated $263 in sales tax, which is far above the maximum refund.
Kansas legislative leaders have said that food sales tax could be an issue to tackle next year. One proposal this year had the tax on food falling to 4.90 percent. That is welcome, and would reduce the harsh regressive nature of Kansas taxation. But Kansas would still have a high tax rate on food. Kansas legislative and executive leaders must realize that a shift to consumption taxes must be accompanied by relief from its disproportionate harm to low-income households.
Those who call for a return to 90 percent tax rates should be aware that few people actually paid tax at those rates.
Progressives are calling for higher income tax rates on the rich. The top marginal tax rate — that’s the rate that applies to high income earners on most of their income — was above 90 percent during most of the 1950s. From 2003 to 2012 it was 35 percent, and is now 39.6 percent. Some see that as a lost opportunity. If we could return to the tax rates of the 1950s, they say, we could generate much more revenue for government.
The top marginal tax rate is the rate that applies to income. It’s not the same as what is actually paid. This fact is unknown or ignored by those who clamor for higher taxes on the rich.
The mistake the progressives make is equating tax rates with the tax actually paid. For many people, there is a direct relationship. For workers who earn a paycheck, there’s not much they can do to change the timing of their income, find tax shelters, or shift income to capital gains. When income tax rates rise, they have to pay more. But people with high incomes can use these and other strategies to reduce the taxes they pay. In fact, there is an entire industry of accountants and lawyers to help people reduce their tax. Often — particularly in the past — investments and transactions were made solely for the purpose of avoiding taxes, not for any other economic benefit.
But: High tax rates make the middle class feel better about paying their own taxes. With top tax rates of 90 percent, they may believe that the rich are paying a lot of tax. The middle class may take comfort in the fact that someone else is worse off. But that is based on the misconception that high tax rates mean rich people actually pay correspondingly higher tax.
Top tax rates and taxes actually paid
Figure 1. The top marginal income tax rate has varied widely, but since World War II, tax revenue collected as a percent of GDP is remarkably constant.A series of charts illustrate the lack of a relationship between the top marginal income tax rate and the income taxes actually paid. (Click charts for larger versions.)
Figure 1 shows that that top marginal tax rate has varied widely. But since World War II, the taxes actually collected, expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product, has been fairly constant. In 1952 the top tax rate was 92.0 percent, and income taxes paid as a percent of GDP was 13.5 percent. In 2012 the top rate was 35.0 percent, and income taxes paid as a percent of GDP was 11.2 percent.
Figure 2. The top marginal income tax rate has varied widely, but the average federal tax rates paid by top earners has varied less.Figure 2 shows how the top marginal income tax rate has varied widely, but the average federal tax rates paid by top earners has varied less. Data for this series is available only back to 1979.
Figure 3. The top marginal income tax rate has varied widely and has mostly fallen, and the share of federal taxes paid by top income earners has risen.Figure 3 shows how the top marginal income tax rate has varied widely and has mostly fallen, and the share of federal taxes paid by top income earners has risen.
Sources of data for these charts are the Internal Revenue Service, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and Congressional Budget Office.
Hauser’s Law
In 2010 W. Kurt Hauser explained in The Wall Street Journal: “Even amoebas learn by trial and error, but some economists and politicians do not. The Obama administration’s budget projections claim that raising taxes on the top 2% of taxpayers, those individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning $250,000 or more, will increase revenues to the U.S. Treasury. The empirical evidence suggests otherwise. None of the personal income tax or capital gains tax increases enacted in the post-World War II period has raised the projected tax revenues. Over the past six decades, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have averaged just under 19% regardless of the top marginal personal income tax rate. The top marginal rate has been as high as 92% (1952-53) and as low as 28% (1988-90). This observation was first reported in an op-ed I wrote for this newspaper in March 1993. A wit later dubbed this ‘Hauser’s Law.’”
Incentives matter, economists tell us. People react to changes in tax law. As tax rates rise, people seek to reduce their taxable income. A common strategy is to make investments in economically unproductive tax shelters. There is less incentive to work, to save and build up capital stocks, and invest. These are some of the reasons why tax rate hikes usually don’t generate the promised revenue.
The subtitle to Hauser’s article is “Tax revenues as a share of GDP have averaged just under 19%, whether tax rates are cut or raised. Better to cut rates and get 19% of a larger pie.” Figure 1 illustrates. The top line, the top marginal tax rate in effect for each year, varies widely. The other two lines show total taxes and federal income taxes as a percent of gross domestic product. Since World War II, these lines are fairly constant, even as the top marginal tax rate varies.
Economic freedom, in countries where it is allowed to thrive, leads to better lives for people as measured in a variety of ways. This is true for everyone, especially for poor people.
One of the findings highlighted in the presentation is that while the average income in free countries is much higher than that in the least-free countries, the ratio is even higher for the poorest people in these countries. This is consistent with the findings that economic freedom is good for everyone, and even more so for those with low incomes.
Civil rights, a clean environment, long life expectancy, low levels of corruption, less infant mortality, less child labor, and lower unemployment are all associated with greater levels of economic freedom.
What are the components or properties of economic freedom? The presentation lists these:
Property rights are protected under an impartial rule of law.
People are free to trade with others, both within and outside the country.
There is a sound national currency, so that peoples’ money keeps its value.
Government stays small, relative to the size of the economy.
Over the last ten years, the United States’ ranking has fallen relative to other countries, and the presentation says our position is expected to keep falling. The question is asked: “Will our quality of life fall with it?”
Economic freedom is not necessarily the platform of any single political party. Even with a Republican president and Republican congress, the size of government rose. In 2005 the Cato Institute studied the numbers and found this: “All presidents presided over net increases in spending overall, though some were bigger spenders than others. As it turns out, George W. Bush is one of the biggest spenders of them all. In fact, he is an even bigger spender than Lyndon B. Johnson in terms of discretionary spending.” This was before the spending on the prescription drug program had started.
Critics of economic freedom
The defining of what economic freedom means is important. Sometimes you’ll see people write things like “Bernie Madoff was only exercising his personal economic freedom while he ran his investment firm.” Madoff, we now know, was a thief. He stole his clients’ money. That’s contrary to property rights, and therefore contrary to economic freedom.
Or, you’ll see people say if you don’t like government, go to Somalia. That country, one of the poorest in the world — but not the poorest — is used as an example of how bad a form of government is anarchy. The evidence is, however, that Somalia’s former government was so bad that things improved after the fall of that government. See Peter T. Leeson, Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse and History of Somalia (1991–2006).
You’ll also encounter people who argue that some countries are poor because they have no natural resources. But there are many countries with few natural resources that have economic freedom and a high standard of living. Most countries that are poor are that way because they are run by corrupt governments that have no respect for economic freedom.
Some will argue that economic freedom means the freedom to pollute the environment. But it is in wealthy countries that the environment is respected. Poor countries, where people are struggling just to find food for each day, don’t have the time or wealth to be concerned about the environment.
Over the past two decades most large industrial countries have reduced their corporate income tax rates. Two countries, however, stand out from this trend: France and The United States.
In Abolish the Corporate Income Tax economist Laurence J. Kotlikoff writes “I, like many economists, suspect that our corporate income tax is economically self-defeating — hurting workers, not capitalists, and collecting precious little revenue to boot.”
High taxes in America cause companies to invest overseas in order to escape these high American taxes. For example, Apple takes steps to minimize the income tax it pays, as do most companies. In Calculating Apple’s True U.S. Tax Rate law professor Victor Fleischer explains and estimates what rate Apple pays:
The whole point of the Senate hearing was to show how Apple shifts substantial amounts of its economic profits from the United States to Ireland, where they are taxed at a rate close to zero. Those profits are then sheltered in Ireland and untaxed unless Apple decides to bring the cash back to the United States.
These overseas profits create deferred tax liabilities that will not be taxed until the cash is repatriated. But Apple is reluctant to repatriate its overseas cash; it would rather lobby for another tax holiday and bring the cash back tax-free. An added benefit of a tax holiday for Apple is that it would provide a quick jump in reported earnings when the accounting entry for the deferred tax liability is reversed. …
Thus, Apple’s “true U.S. tax rate,” according to my own calculation, was 8.2 percent.
The corporate income tax rate in the United States is 35 percent. So how does Apple pay such a lower rate to the U.S? It locates operations overseas. It earns profits overseas, and pays taxes there.
Using the visualization.If corporate tax rates were lowered, we’d see more economic activity here rather than overseas. That would help workers in America, as they can’t easily move their capital and investments overseas to take advantage of lower tax rates. But the wealthy — like Apple’s shareholders — can do that, and they have.
Using data gathered by Tax Policy Center at Brookings Institution, I’ve prepared an interactive visualization of corporate income tax rate trends over time. Click here to open the visualization in a new window.
As the City of Wichita prepares to grant special tax status to another new industrial building, existing landlords must be wondering why they struggle to stay in business when city hall sets up subsidized competitors with new buildings and a large cost advantage. From June 2014.
Tomorrow the Wichita City Council considers whether to grant property and sales tax exemptions to a proposed speculative industrial building in north central Wichita. If approved, this will be the second project undertaken under new economic development policies that allow for this type of tax exemption.
City documents estimate that the property tax savings for the first year will be $312,055. This exemption will be granted for five years, with a second five year period possible if performance goals are met.
The city documents also state that the project will also apply for a sales tax exemption, but no estimate of these tax savings are given. It’s common for a project of this type to have about half its cost in purchases subject to sales tax. With “site work and building” at $10,350,000, sales tax in Wichita on half that amount is $370,012. Undoubtedly a rough estimate, it nonetheless gives an idea of how much sales tax the developers will avoid paying.
(If city hall has its way, the sales tax in Wichita will soon increase by one cent per dollar, meaning the developers of this project would save $421,762 in sales tax. While others will hurry to make purchases before the higher sales tax rate takes effect — if it does — these developers will be in no hurry. Their sales tax is locked in at zero percent. In fact, once having a sales tax or property tax exemption, these developers are now in a position to root for higher sales and property tax rates, as that increases costs for their competitors, thereby giving these tax-exempt developers a competitive advantage.)
City documents give the benefit-cost ratios for the city and overlapping jurisdictions:
City of Wichita General Fund 1.30 to one
Sedgwick County 1.18 to one
USD 259 1.00 to one
State of Kansas 12.11 to one
It’s not known whether these ratios include the sales tax forgiveness.
While the City of Wichita insists that projects show a benefit-cost ratio of 1.3 to one or better (although there are many exceptions), it doesn’t apply that standard for overlapping jurisdictions. Here, Sedgwick County experiences a benefit-cost ratio of 1.18 to one, and the Wichita school district (USD 259) 1.00 to one. These two governmental bodies have no input on the decision the city is making on their behalf. The school district’s share of the forgiven taxes is 47.4 percent.
When the city granted a similar tax exemption to a speculative warehouse in southwest Wichita, my estimates were that its landlord has a cost advantage of about 20 percent over other property owners. Existing industrial landlords in Wichita — especially those with available space to rent and those who may lose tenants to this new building — must be wondering why they struggle to stay in business when city hall sets up subsidized competitors with new buildings and a large cost advantage.
Wichita property taxes
Property taxes in Wichita are high for industrial buildings, and even higher for commercial buildings. See Wichita property taxes compared. So it’s difficult to blame developers for seeking relief. But instead of offering tax relief to those who ask and to those city hall approves of, it would be better to have lower taxes for everyone.
Targeted economic development incentives
The targeted economic development efforts of governments like Wichita fail for several reasons. First is the knowledge problem, in that government simply does not know which companies are worthy of public investment. In the case of the Wichita, do we really know which industries should be targeted? Is 1.3 to one really the benchmark we should seek, or would we be better off by insisting on 1.4 to one? Or should we relax the requirement to 1.2 to one so that more projects might qualify?
This assumes that these benefit-costs ratios have validity. This is far from certain, as follows:
The benefits that government claims are not really benefits. Instead, they’re in the form of higher tax revenue. This is very different from the profits companies earn in voluntary market transactions.
Government claims that in order to get these “benefits,” the incentives must be paid. But often the new economic activity (expansion, etc.) would have happened anyway without the incentives.
Why is it that most companies are able to grow without incentives, but only a few companies require incentives? What is special about these companies?
If the relatively small investment the city makes in incentives is solely responsible for such wonderful outcomes in terms of jobs, why doesn’t the city do this more often? If the city has such power to create economic growth, why is anyone unemployed?
Do incentives work?
The uncontroverted peer-reviewed research tells us that targeted economic development incentives don’t work, if we consider the entire economy. See: Research on economic development incentives. Some of the conclusions of the studies listed there include:
“No evidence of incentive impact on manufacturing value-added or unemployment”
“Small reduction in employment by businesses which received Ohio’s tax incentives”
“No evidence of large firm impacts on local economy”
“No permanent employment increase across a quasi-experimental panel of all Cabela’s stores”
“Employment impact of large firms is less than gross job creation (by about 70%)”
These research programs illustrate the fallacy of the seen and the unseen. It is easy to see the jobs being created by economic development incentives. It’s undeniable that jobs are created at firms that receive incentives, at least most of the time. But these jobs are easy to see. It’s easy for news reporters to find the newly-hired and grateful workers, or to show video footage of a new manufacturing plant.
But it’s very difficult to find specific instances of the harm that government intervention produces. It is, generally, dispersed. People who lose their jobs usually don’t know the root cause of why they are now unemployed. Businesses whose sales decline often can’t figure out why.
But evidence tells us this is true: These incentives, along with other forms of government interventionism, do more harm than good.
Examining tax collections by the states shows that Kansas collects more tax than many of our neighbors, and should put to rest some common myths.
Tax Collections by the States, Kansas and selected States, total and per capita.Of a selection of nearby states, Kansas collects more taxes than most, on a per-person basis. The nearby table shows total tax collections, and tax collections per person. The chart shows collections grouped by major category, and one special category, which is severance taxes.
Some of the data regarding specific taxes is revealing and should shape the debate over taxes in Kansas. Consider severance taxes, which are taxes levied on extracting materials like oil, gas, and coal. The common narrative in Kansas is that states like Texas are sitting atop a sea of oil, with the severance taxes funding a major portion of state government. The data shows that Texas collected $223 per person in severance taxes in 2014. For Kansas the figure is $43. This difference — $180 — doesn’t account for the difference in total tax collections between the states. Texas collects $2,050 in total taxes per person, while Kansas collects $2,526, a difference of $476.
Tax Collections by the States, Kansas and selected States, 2014. Click for larger version.We also commonly hear that Kansas doesn’t have the tourism of states like Florida, and therefore doesn’t have the flood of tourism spending and accompanying sales tax. Again, looking at the data, se see that Florida collected $1,460 in Sales and Gross Receipt Taxes per person for 2014. Kansas collected $1,340. This is a difference of $120, while the difference between total tax collections for Florida ($1,779) and Kansas ($2,526) is $747.
You may use this interactive visualization to customize the table to fit your own needs. Click here to open the visualization. Data is from the U.S. Census Bureau, Survey of State Government Tax Collections and Bureau of Economic Analysis, along with author’s calculations. Visualization developed using Tableau Public. Data is expressed on a per person basis, not adjusted for inflation.
To see how your state compares with others in spending, use the interactive visualization below. The figures presented are per-person, and not adjusted for inflation. Figures for 2015 are estimates.
We come to offer you a wonderful opportunity for your — what shall we call it? Your theory? No, nothing is more deceptive than theory. Your doctrine? Your system? Your principle? But you dislike doctrines, you have a horror of systems, as for principles, you deny that there are any in political economy; therefore we shall call it your practice — your practice without theory and without principle.
High taxes in America cause companies to invest overseas in order to escape these high American taxes. For example, Apple takes steps to minimize the income tax it pays, as do most companies. In Calculating Apple’s True U.S. Tax Rate law professor Victor Fleischer explains and estimates what rate Apple pays:
City documents estimate that the property tax savings for the first year will be $312,055. This exemption will be granted for five years, with a second five year period possible if performance goals are met.
While the City of Wichita insists that projects show a benefit-cost ratio of 1.3 to one or better (although there are many exceptions), it doesn’t apply that standard for overlapping jurisdictions. Here, Sedgwick County experiences a benefit-cost ratio of 1.18 to one, and the Wichita school district (USD 259) 1.00 to one. These two governmental bodies have no input on the decision the city is making on their behalf. The school district’s share of the forgiven taxes is 47.4 percent.
City documents estimate that the property tax savings for the first year will be $312,055. This exemption will be granted for five years, with a second five year period possible if performance goals are met.
