No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Doyle and Legislature – “This will not stand”

by @ 12:42 on June 7, 2007. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

The Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance figured out that, as a percentage of personal income, the Wisconsin tax bite dropped from 12.18% in 2003-2004 (fiscal year 2004) to 12.13% in 2004-2005 (fiscal year 2005), which dropped our national rank from 6th to 8th. Shhh, don’t tell the tax-increasers in Madistan because that will cause them to redouble (again) their efforts to make us #1.

Before the rest of you break out the bubbly, there are several rather ugly caveats:

  • First, the Census Bureau, which provides the numbers that WTA looks at, is about 2 years behind. Anybody care to guess what the FY2006 and FY2007 numbers will read?
  • The WTA said in that press release, “The drop in rank was due primarily to increased taxes elsewhere, rather than reduced taxes here.” So, I’ll explore that.
  • Both corporate income taxes (up from 0.41% of personal income in 2004 to 0.44% of personal income in 2005) and property taxes (up from 4.42% to 4.43% of personal income) went up faster than total income, which went up 6.54% (combining a 0.47% increase in population and a 6.04% increase in per-capita income; numbers collated by me from from the Census Bureau). In terms of dollars, corporate income taxes went up 14.77% while property taxes went up 4.94%.
  • That rather-astonishing increase in total income masked increases in personal income taxes (4.07%) and sales taxes (3.26%).
  • With inflation between July 2004 and July 2005 at 3.17%, and population growth at 0.47%, every major category other than sales taxes went up faster than the combined effects of inflation and population growth.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford a $3 billion tax increase between now and 2009.

Revisions/extensions (11:23 am 6/8/2007) – Since Blogger seems to be having an issue sending out pingback requests, others that picked up on this from here….

Dad29, who points out that we’re also in the lower quintile of GDP growth
Headless Blogger, who asks if 0.05% is significant (it’s $25 for somebody making $50,000, so it’s not exactly significant).

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