Burnt Orange Report

I made that calculator for Rep Rodriguez last summer as a matter of fact.

Ahgem.... MY State Senator Has a simular idea and has been going around the state and promoting it :O) you can view Sen. Shapliegh's power point presintation at http://www.shapleigh.org/WebsitePresentation_files/frame.htm

:) Can't forget about the good Senator in El Paso

Why doesn't the calculator work for high-dollar accounts? I tried a high-end Park-Cities type entry ($1,000,000 house, $1,000,000 income) and couldn't get it to work. For one of my friends, who lives in North Dallas and earns $55k, his savings would be $300 a month!

Otherwise, it's a great thing, and I'm forwarding the link on to my voters.

It works fine for me at $1,000,000 each (don't include the commas and $ of course). It shows that you would have to pay $55,000 more under Rodriguez's plan. Although, the generic ratio is 2/1 (house cost over income) so if you had a $2,000,000 house you'd only be paying $40,000 more under the plan.

Big flaw in this is the 40+% of Texans who pay no property tax now, those who don't own real estate. It's incorrect to state that their rent would definitely go down if this plan were passed. First, they've signed a lease with a given rent. So no immediate change. Second, rents are sticky and drop very slowly and reluctantly. Any change would likely be minor (and you'd likely have to move to see it).

Note that liberals made the above point when dismissing Gov. Bush's property tax cut proposal:

Here's how Carlos Guerra explains it: "Bush's proposal to return $160 to every homeowner through a property tax cut, however, does not help the poorest Texans. Sales taxes collected 55 cents of every budget-surplus dollar and an unconscionable portion of that was squeezed from the poorest Texans. Let's also remember that more than 40 percent of Texans are renters who don't own homes, and renters also tend to be the poorer Texans who won't see a penny of that refund. How fair is it to refund money — 55 percent of which was collected from everyone — to less than 60 percent of the taxpayers?"

Another problem is it's just too easy to raise the income tax, and to shunt the money around to non-educational purposes, as would inevitably happen.

Also, the cost of administering and enforcing an income tax would be huge. Our own mini-IRS! Wouldn't save administrative cost from eliminating only the M&O property tax.

I would think changing to an income tax would help to promote home ownership to that 40% of people, as long as the income tax is progressive enough to exempt lower incomes from paying much tax. At the same time, it would force wealthy renters to pay into the system. (And if you don't think there are any wealthy renters, just go look around Uptown Dallas.)

I also don't see how administering an income tax would cost more than administering property taxes. You'd no longer need all those appraisers, and the people it takes to handle all the appraisal protests.

Jason, would still need appraisers for city, county, non-M&O school, community college property taxes.

I disagree with the plan in it's entirety. It certainly has great selling points for general consumption, but further socializing the costs of K-12 education isn't what we need.

I apologize, my link got screwed up. This is the correct one.

Mr.Hueter's knowledge of political theory appears to be a tad faulty. By his logic, funding public education is socialism. What kind of Republican newspeak is this? K-12 is no more socialism than is the local police department, the animal shelter or the water district.

Dennis, I'm no Republican.

Who owns the vast majority of K-12 schools, who covers their educators' and administrators' paychecks, who sets their curriculum, who crafts the rules and regulations for those schools' conduct? The government. Ditto for all the markets you mention above. It is state socialism, limited in reach only by the few exceptions local and federal government grant.