Posted on 05/14/2009 5:12:28 AM PDT by mathprof
One of Maryland's budget-balancing tactics - asking millionaires to pay more money to the state - appears to be backfiring as the number of the highest-earning taxpayers dwindles with the flagging economy.
A year ago, Maryland became one of the first states in the nation to create a higher tax bracket for millionaires as part of a broader package of maneuvers intended to help balance the state's finances and make the tax code more progressive.
But as the state comptroller's office sifts through this year's returns, it is finding that the number of Marylanders with more than $1 million in taxable income who filed by the end of April has fallen by one-third, to about 2,000. Taxes collected from those returns as of last month have declined by roughly $100 million.
Many taxpayers in that bracket likely filed an extension and won't complete their returns until October, but a trend is emerging that indicates a "substantial decline" in the number of residents and small businesses with that kind of income, Comptroller Peter Franchot wrote in a letter to Gov. Martin O'Malley and legislative leaders.
"The revenue figures are ugly," Franchot said in an interview. "Right now, we're digging through a pile of tax returns and trying to understand this."
The recession provides an obvious explanation. Capital gains have become almost nonexistent as stock markets have tanked. Corporate executives have seen their salaries slashed. And small businesses, many of whom file individual income tax returns, have seen their profits gouged by the economic downturn.
Another more debatable explanation would be that millionaires have simply fled the Free State. While some say they have heard anecdotal evidence of the wealthy packing it up, officials say there's no proof yet of such a development.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
Another shining example of Thomas Sowell’s single level thinking. Libs believe that if you raise the tax rate, the only things that will happen is that the money will move out of the bank accounts of the wealthy and into the state treasury. Therefore, more money to spend. The libs never seem to understand secondary or tertiary effects....
hh
How difficult is it to compare the names on a few thousand returns from one year to the next and count how many are now missing?
Maryland millionaires are welcome in Texas. They bring businesses, knowledge, wealth and JOBS!!!!
So far, Texas hasn’t tried to discriminate against millionaires.
Come on down y’all!!!
Why don’t they just emulate Massachusetts and have a box that anyone can check so that they can pay at a higher rate? Oh wait, that didn’t work. John Kerry didn’t even take advantage of the opportunity to be more patriotic.
How long before they implement Chinese-like policies that make it incredibly difficult/expensive to move?
I’m personally aware of someone who just did exactly that.
I know several millionaires who have left Maryland. Just packed up and established legal residence in Florida or elsewhere.
They need look no further than their greedy selves along with Obama and and Congresscritters.
...and it's in !*$&%* Maryland.
[/grumble]
When Democratic issues fail at the ballet box, it is because "we failed to get our message out". That is, the smartest people in the world, the Democrats, know that if you really just understood how taking your freedoms and raising your taxes to give to people who don't work is good for you, you'd fall right in line, you bumpkin.
When simple laws of supply and demand make them confused and cry like a little baby, then they're "trying to undersdand this."
(Modern) Democrats think all they have to raise taxes A, and bango, B increase your tax revenue. They never understand that the world is not a lab experiment, and when you raise taxes A, employer B moves out and goes to Country C.
It IS funny/strange that leftists can’t ever understand that people react to incentives.
I think it has to do with that aspect of their worldview that doesn’t recognize the ubiquitous existance of tradeoffs in every decision and policy.
They believe in perfect, tradeoff free solutions, and every time they try something, they think they’re implementing one of these tradeoff free solutions.
* The continued creation of wealth is necessary to take away wealth. No wealth, nothing to re-distribute. IOW- the party of death is killing the Golden Goose.
* Anti-capitalism is anti-American. Since the left is anti-capitalism, they must be viewed as un-American.
* Wealthy people are smart - they change their behavior to side-step the confiscatory rules - to wit - they move away from Maryland.
People are fleeing the blue states, because of high taxes, high crime, poor schools, corrupt politicians...
...and they infest the red states, and register as dumocrats.
Colorado and Florida are prime examples of this process.
Pretty soon, we will all be equally miserable.
Yeah, that's a real head scratcher there.
That’s why, after the “grand divorce”,
the free states will have to establish STRICT ideological immigration tests.
Since when was Dr Thomas Sowell a liberal? He is a distinguished conservative economist now affiliated with the Hoover Institution. Nobody at Stanford will socialize with him because he’s so conservative.
I was going to say something else, but about 30 people beat me to it. I doubt that any true liberal knows why this is funny, just as no true conservative missed the stupidity of a socialist who is trying to understand why the wealthy don't cooperate when you spread their wealth around.
Great quote by Ayn Rand! I love to see the good stuff.
I hear ya. I’m in NJ now, but my wife is from NY and I grew up in PA. As bad as it is politically, I love the Mid-Atlantic. Can’t see myself living anywhere else. This region of the country is so blessed with rainfall, woods and mountains, beaches, colonial history, etc. I’ll be hanged if I just pack up and let the Commies continue to ruin it. And it’s mainly the cities and the suburbs that are the problem here anyway—the rural areas are still great places to be.
I figure I’ll bide my time right here, fight the good fight, and get ready to rebuild after the socialist empire has collapsed.
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