Author Archives: Anna Soboleva

In my public policy class we are doing a project on Sport stadiums and how they are being built by tax money. I just wanted to throw out a few numbers.

These are all from the book “A Field of Schemes” by  Joanna Cagan and Neil DeMause

The construction of a new stadium can cost close to a billon dollars, most of this coming out of taxpayers pockets. The money is usually taken out of things that needed funding,  for example when the Baltimore built it’s new stadium, they had a failing public school system and one of the highest homeless rates in the country. Yet they rerouted tax money into building a $400 million dollar stadium.

The Idea that they try and sell you on is that the city will be making money off the revenue from these stadiums, yet the deals they make with sports franchise includes having the team play rent free, and the team usually get 75% of ticket prices and franchise rights.

When companies are given tax abatments in return for the new jobs they will bring to that city, the cost per job can run as high as $250,000 per job and considering that most of these jobs are low-wage job, it will be years before the city can see a return on the money they spent on aquiring these jobs.

I’m also attaching a couple of links from newspaper articles that I’ve found interesting (for some reason I can’t embed the link)

http://www.american.com/archive/2008/april-04-08/a-closer-look-at-stadium-subsidies

http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results.html?artId=9474

http://www.heartland.org/publications/budget%20tax/article.html?articleid=23875

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/nyregion/26fraud.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin

I found this earlier today.  It just goes against alot of the stereotypes in the books and articales we’ve read in class. 

Welfare cheating has become a business for some people. People who would be making more than enough are stealing from the government, because they work for cash busniess it’s pretty unfair. 

Welfare cheats, come in all different colors and walks of life.

Comparing the candidate tax plans.

Today many of us declared out political stand points and i thought it would be interesting to connect that to the upcoming elections and the presidential candidates tax proposals

Here are some things that I found interesting from http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411693_CandidateTaxPlans.pdf

· The two candidates’ plans would have sharply different distributional effects. Senator McCain’s tax cuts would primarily benefit those with very high incomes, almost all of whom would receive large tax cuts that would, on average, raise their after-tax incomes by more than twice the average for all households. Many fewer households at the bottom of the income distribution would get tax cuts and those whose taxes fall would, on average, see their after-tax income rise much less. In marked contrast, Senator Obama offers much larger tax breaks to low- and middle-income taxpayers and would increase taxes on high-income taxpayers. The largest tax cuts, as a share of income, would go to those at the bottom of the income distribution, while taxpayers with the highest income would see their taxes rise.

John McCain

· Extension and indexation of the 2007 AMT patch. Individuals must compute their taxes under both the regular tax and the alternative minimum tax. If the alternative minimum tax exceeds the regular tax, taxpayers must pay the higher amount. The AMT requires taxpayers to add a number of preference items (including personal exemptions and certain deductions) to their taxable income, but they may deduct a special AMT exemption. Since 2001, the AMT exemption has been temporarily increased for a year or two at a time to prevent large numbers of taxpayers from becoming subject to the tax. In 2007, the exemption was $66,250 for joint returns and $44,350 for singles and heads of household. But, in 2008, the AMT exemption is set to return to its 2000 level—$45,000 for couples and $33,750 for singles and heads of household—and the number of taxpayers subject to the AMT is projected to increase from 3.5 million in 2007 to 26.5 million in 2008.

· Dependent exemption increase. Taxpayers may claim exemptions for themselves, their spouses (on joint returns), and each dependent (usually children, but also certain other relatives and household members supported by the taxpayer). The exemption is $3,500 in 2008 and is indexed for inflation going forward. Senator McCain has proposed increasing the dependent exemption—but not the personal exemption for taxpayers themselves—by $500 each year beginning in 2010. Married couples filing a joint return reporting adjusted gross income of $50,000 or less would be eligible for the $7,000 exemption immediately (in 2009

Obama

· Partial extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Senator Obama has called for extending the tax cuts affecting the middle class while eliminating those benefitting the wealthiest Americans. According to the campaign, Obama would extend the child credit expansions; the changes to marriage bonuses and penalties; and the 10, 15, 25, and 28 percent income tax rates, as well as the lower tax rates on capital gains and qualified dividends for taxpayers in those four tax brackets. He would restore the 36 and 39.6 percent rates and increase the rate on capital gains and dividends for taxpayers in those brackets. To match the campaign’s stated revenue targets, we assumed a rate of 25 percent for capital gains and qualified dividends. 3 Obama would also restore the phaseouts of personal exemptions and itemized deductions, but set the income threshold at $250,000 for married couples filing jointly. As under current law, the thresholds for the phaseout of personal exemptions would be lower for singles and heads of households, but those for the phaseout of itemized deductions would not vary with filing status. The thresholds would be indexed for inflation as they are under current law. Senator Obama would also extend several smaller expiring tax cuts, including the adoption credit and the simplifications to the earned income tax credit. Certain other provisions would be modified, as described below.

· Exempting seniors earning less than $50,000 from income taxation. Senator Obama would exempt seniors earning less than $50,000 from income taxation. A tax unit would pay no income tax if the primary taxpayer (and the spouse for married couples) is age 65 or older and the tax unit’s adjusted gross income, untaxed Social Security benefits, and tax-exempt interest totals less than $50,000. Tax units entitled to a net refund from the government would remain entitled to that refund. The threshold would be the same for both single and married households and would not be indexed for inflation (so its value would erode over time). The eligibility threshold for seniors is a strict threshold—there is no phaseout.

Theres also this link which I found very intresting.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/candidates08/compare/

I guess I was into reading this because I’m pretty lost about whom I’m going to vote for and was hoping that this would in some way change my mind (it hasn’t, it’s just made me more confused and I’ll probably wind up flipping a coin when I go into vote)

This also kind of plays into our discussion about how everyone votes to cover their own ass, and for a lot of people especially during such shaky economic times, I might take my liberal views out of the equation and care more about my money.