Austin to get $11.7M in sales tax revenue

Austin Business Journal ^ | January 11, 2012 | Vicky Garza

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Austin to get $11.7M in sales tax revenue

Austin will collect $11.7 million in sales tax revenue from the state this month for sales that took place in November, up 6.2 percent from the same period last year, according to data released by Texas Comptroller Susan Combs.

State sales tax revenue was $1.98 billion, up 9.5 percent compared to November 2010 sales.

“Sales tax revenue continues to grow in almost all major economic categories and revenue has now increased for 21 consecutive months,” Combs said.

Sales taxes from retail trade and restaurant activity continue to improve and tax revenue from the oil and natural gas sector are also helping to lift overall collections, Combs said.

In Central Texas, Bastrop saw the greatest increase in sales tax revenue. The community will receive $390,000 in sales tax revenue, an increase of 24 percent from last year.

Round Rock’s jumped 17 percent to $5.3 million, while Cedar Park and Pflugerville increased 10 percent to $1.1 million and $455,000, respectively.

Both Manor and Georgetown saw a decrease of about 4 percent in sales tax collections.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

This is what happens when people flock to your state because you've lowered taxes, stopped over litigation and rolled back regulations.

You have GROWTH and your tax revenue GROWS.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

HOUSTON TOPS LIST OF CITIES WITH FASTEST WAGE GROWTH HOUSTON – Business Insider has released a list of the top 10 cities for fastest wage growth in America. Houston is number 1. According to the report the number of jobs in America is now growing and so are full-time wages, at least in some parts of the nation.

Using the PayScale Index, which tracks how private-sector wages have changed, the report shows that between Q4 of 2010 and Q4 of 2011 18 U.S. metro areas saw some wage growth, the most growth was in energy and technology jobs. The report says that construction and manufacturing jobs are starting to see improvement as well.

The 10 cities with the biggest increase in pay for private-sector workers are: San Diego at #10, Atlanta at #9, Philadelphia at #8, St. Louis comes in seventh, #6 is San Francisco.

The top five include Seattle, Washington DC, Chicago and # 2 Miami.

It is Houston that sits atop the list at #1 with a 2.2% increase in the 12 month period measured.

[trumandogz]

“Austin will collect $11.7 million in sales tax revenue from the state this month for sales that took place in November, up 6.2 percent from the same period last year, according to data released by Texas Comptroller Susan Combs.”

Wow, that’s amazing!

Perhaps, Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell should be running for president!

And if he were to run for president, I’m sure he would be polling above 5%.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Texas Enterprise Fund

The case for Perry’s venture capitalismThere’s a big difference between the Texas and statist approaches - There has been a lot of debate about Gov. Rick Perry’s economic development funds. The criticism centers on the idea that the Texan’s funds create a “Solyndra problem” for him, that by investing in businesses that bring jobs to the state, Mr. Perry has the same job-creation approach President Obama displayed in backing federal loans to a solar-energy firm.

Equating the two men in this way provides a convenient symmetry, but it’s also a false comparison that misses why many free marketers are comfortable with Gov. Perry even while critical of Solyndra.”……

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Perry Wins IPad and IPhone Vote (We CAN take on China and win!)…….”While the rest of the country has been suffering from Obama-itis (too much government regulations and power hungry unionism), Texas has been trying to make itself attractive to business (by limiting regulations, empowering free work rules, limiting frivolous lawsuits, educating ALL its people, limiting taxes) Which brings me back to the IPad and IPhone. As many of you know (well, at least the tech-knowledgeable among us), the brains of the IPAD and IPhone is the A5 chip. These chips are now made in Texas in a new $3.6 Billion facility. How big is this new facility? Well, to put it in terms any Texan would understand: Nine football fields. This is a major facility:

The A5 chip inside Apple’s iPad 2 and iPhone 4S is now being produced stateside (In Texas), according to Reuters. Sources familiar with Apple’s production details told the news organization that Samsung Electronics is now handling production of the A5 in Austin, Texas. Among manufactured products, the state’s leading export category is chemical manufactures, which accounted for $38.4 billion (20 percent) of Texas’ total merchandise exports in 2008. Other top 2008 manufactured exports were computers and electronic products ($35.2 billion), machinery manufactures ($27.3 billion), and petroleum and coal products ($25.3 billion).”…….

[Cincinatus' Wife]

"Another new measure made tightening air quality permits on the oil and gas industry more difficult. That law, which Perry signed in June, requires the Texas environmental agency to analyze the effect of new regulation on the economy - including how it might hurt a company - before implementation. The economic impact could override the environmental benefit of the new regulation. The new law reflects Perry's contention that global warming is a questionable theory and that regulation always creates an adverse business climate." Perry Slashed Environmental Enforcement in Texas

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Perry: Uproot and Overhaul Washington

The Perry Plan: Energizing American Jobs and Security

The Perry Economic Plan: Cut, Balance and Grow

[snip] “Dynamic Tax Score for RickPerry.org, Inc. Proposal:

Based on the higher GDP estimates forecast by the dynamic scoring exercise, the Perry proposal will not only lead to an increase in overall economic activity and jobs, but will also lead to higher federal revenues in the long term. In fact, the analysis suggests that revenues could be as much as $406.8 billion higher than under the static model by 2020, and could be as high as 19.5 percent of GDP.

The dynamic score of the proposal suggests that lower flatter taxes could generate both more revenue than the current tax code, and significantly more economic growth over time. With increasing demands on the Federal government from growing entitlements, higher pension expenses and interest on the debt, it will be necessary to increase the size of the economy – and the tax base – in order to generate significantly higher revenues. Table 7 shows how the Perry proposals would do this over a seven year period.’ [snip] Tax Proposal Score PDF

Texas Debt Clock

[Cincinatus' Wife]

"FRAMINGHAM — Massachusetts residents should brace for another year of program cuts and elimination of services, Gov. Deval Patrick’s top budget adviser warned Thursday, citing the growth of budget-busting accounts that he said will be the target of a new round of reforms.

Even with revenue forecasters expecting a $940 million uptick in tax collections in the upcoming budget year, spending on fixed costs in several major areas – Medicaid services for low-income and disabled residents, debt service, public pensions and collective bargaining agreements – are on track to easily swallow up those revenues and much more, said Jay Gonzalez, secretary of administration and finance.

“It’s heading in the right direction but we still have a ways to go to dig ourselves out of the hole of the recession,” Gonzalez said in a phone interview. “We’ve got some serious budget challenges.”

Gonzalez said the fixed costs, if left unchecked, would grow by $1.6 billion in fiscal 2013, the budget year that begins on July 1, outpacing tax growth by more than $600 million and cutting into revenues for other services. As a result, he said, the Patrick administration plans to unveil a raft of reforms to keep those costs in check. The rest of state government, he said, would see an overall reduction in spending, with limited increases and “many, many” programs level-funded, some slashed, and others eliminated altogether. Source

[trumandogz]

“The A5 chip inside Apple’s iPad 2 and iPhone 4S is now being produced stateside (In Texas), according to Reuters. Sources familiar with Apple’s production details told the news organization that Samsung Electronics is now handling production of the A5 in Austin, Texas.”

A good friend of mine who has a cousin who has a neighbor whose nephew works at the Samsung plant in Austin told me that not only is the Apple chip made in Texas, but that Rick Perry designed the A5 chip.

[corbe]

Are you saying Gov Perry has a5 chip on his shoulder?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Cincinatus’ Wife.

[trumandogz]

That is just what a good friend of mine who has a cousin who has a neighbor whose nephew works at the Samsung plant in Austin told me about Samsung and the Rick Perry Apple chip's.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

With my compliments.

[Marcella]

This is mainly for two reasons: Computer tech companies continue to come to the Austin area, and we have an oil boom in lower south Texas. These two industries, especially the oil one, explode jobs from industries that support oil drilling, many of them located in Houston, and computer tech. companies need employees in the larger Austin area.

[corbe]

Not to disparage your good friends cousins neighbors nephew BUT I don’t think he knows $hit from Shinola. Obviously Cinnanatus Wife does though.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Betting on Rick Perry - a winner in a GOP year, with no need in the world to win liberal approval ………..”IT WILL BE THE JOBS ISSUE—and Texas’s record in creating them—that will define Rick Perry’s presidential run. Since he became governor in 2001, the U.S. as a whole has had a net loss of private-sector jobs, while Texas—which has only 8 percent of the nation’s population—has had a net gain of 825,000 jobs.

Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Board, told me that if you look at the number of jobs created since the recession technically ended in June 2009, Texas has accounted for 48 percent of net new jobs created in the U.S.

Fisher also disparages claims that the jobs are all low-paying jobs at McDonald’s or Walmart, paying the minimum wage, or that they were primarily caused by the oil and natural gas boom. According to Tom Pauken of the Texas Work Force Commission, the annual median wage in Texas in 2010 for all occupations was $31,500 a year, only 7 percent below the national average. That difference is easily explained by the fact that Texas has a younger workforce than most states and a higher percentage of workers in lower-pay agriculture jobs near the border with Mexico. [ CW: Cost of living in Texas is lower than many other states; Texas has no state income tax; Texas is a right to work state.]

As for where the job growth has been, three sectors of the economy have grown faster than the energy sector, which alone added 40,500 net new jobs in 2010. Last year, Texas added 57,900 new jobs in trade, transportation, and utilities; a total of 53,400 jobs in professional and business services; and 44,900 net new jobs in the hospitality industry.

For each of the past seven years, CEOs polled by “Chief Executive” magazine have rated Texas first in the nation for economic development climate and job growth. What is the secret of Texas’s success? Rick Perry isn’t shy about his answer. “It’s all about four points,” he told me. “First, don’t spend all the money. Keep the taxes low and under control. Have regulations that are fair and predictable so business owners know what to expect from one quarter to the next. And reform the legal system so that frivolous lawsuits don’t paralyze employers who are trying to create real wealth.”

If there is on issue which Perry has made a personal crusade, it is lawsuit reform. Working with the legislature, he has helped pass curbs on frivolous lawsuits, implemented a first-in-the-nation system under which loser pays all court costs in many lawsuits, and reformed medical malpractice law.

Dick Weekley, the co-founder of Texans for Lawsuit Reform, says Perry showed genuine political courage in resisting calls for watered-down reforms that wouldn’t have addressed the core problem. He recalls that in 2002 Perry vetoed a bill strongly supported by doctors that would have required them to prompt payment from health maintenance organizations. In the eyes of the tort reform advocates, the bill was a Trojan Horse compromise negotiated between doctors and trial lawyers. “There was a huge response from physicians [against the veto],” Kim Ross, the former top lobbyist for the Texas Medical Association, said. TMA went so far as to endorse Tony Sanchez, Perry’s millionaire Democratic opponent in the 2002 election. “Perry sent a signal that he wanted real reform and would stand his ground,” Weekley told me. “Soon the medical lobbyists playing footsie with the trial lawyers were gone and the obstacles to real reform started falling.”………………..

AND now the TMA is endorsing Gov. Rick Perry. They understand now what he was doing would HELP them.

_________________________________________________

Nov 22, 2011 The Best States For Jobs “The Texas jobs miracle has received a lot of attention since Rick Perry announced his candidacy for president in August. The numbers are impressive. Texas added 1.2 million net jobs since Perry took office as Texas Governor in December 2000, while the U.S. as a whole lost 1.1 million jobs during the same time.”

Texas offers a low tax, business friendly climate with a surging population that offers a nearly unlimited supply of young labor. Texas ranks sixth in our look at the Best States for Business and Careers. The state has aggressively courted companies to come to Texas to take advantage of these attributes. “Everyone is singing from the same hymn book at the Austin Chamber of Commerce,” says Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi.

Governor Perry sent letters to roughly 90 Washington State companies including Amazon.com, Microsoft and Starbucks last year when Washington was considering a tax increase on the state’s top earners. Perry wrote:

“As the State of Washington considers a multibillion-dollar tax increase for citizens and businesses … I invite you to consider your future in America’s new land of opportunity: the State of Texas,” Perry wrote. “If Washington doesn’t want your business, Texas does. Texas has no personal income tax and no interest in getting one.”

[PAConservative1]

Austin is preparing for Rick Perry’s return in 5 days. I heard ear plug sales are off the charts.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Sept 9, 2011: Rick Perry’s Air War (with the EPA) “…..Texas alone opted for the unfriendly approach. It’s the only state that did not issue a plan for compliance—and Perry has made it clear that Texas has no intention of complying. The move was a blatant slap to the Obama administration—and once again gave Perry the national spotlight. Defying the climate rules offered him the perfect opportunity to loudly decry the science of global warming—which in his book Fed Up! he calls a “contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight”—and to slam EPA as a “rogue agency” with an “activist mind-set” that has “targeted Texas.” Such rhetoric is viral catnip to the tea party voters who could help catapult Perry to the 2012 presidential nomination…”

Dec 30, 2011: Statement by Gov. Rick Perry on Court Order to Stay Cross State Air Pollution Rule “Gov. Rick Perry today issued the following statement regarding the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to grant Texas' request for a stay to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR):

"Today’s court decision to stay the implementation of the CSAPR is a preliminary step in the right direction to end the job-killing mandates passed down by the Obama Administration and the unelected bureaucrats at the EPA. The court was right to stay this highly flawed, job-killing rule that was based on inaccurate and incomplete information. Texas will now have a chance to discuss the devastating impact that this rule will have on our state's economy and electric reliability – an opportunity that we were not given by the Obama Administration’s out of control EPA when they adopted the rule."

[roadcat]

My son-in-law just relocated his business to Austin. To be closer to suppliers, and ease of shipping elsewhere. He designs and sells electronics equipment for the music industry. Means we have to travel farther to see our daughter and granddaughter, but they’re happy in Texas because Texas is doing things right.

[EQAndyBuzz]

“Perhaps, Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell should be running for president!”

He is going to waste all that revenue on a failed grren energy initiative.