EVP NOTES — Taxes Too High?

Taxes in the golden state amount to about $250 billion every year, which equates to $6,000 per Californian. A new report from the Tax Foundation puts our tax burden at 11 percent of personal income.

The subject of taxation in our fair state is always a matter of hot debate, whether it be in State Capitol among legislators or between PCOC members at one of our 19 district meetings. Too high or too low is the perennial question. Who would want to live in California given its high taxes, we ask.

California was the sixth-highest tax level of any state in 2012, but it had dropped from fourth in the 2011 rankings as the percentage also declined from 11.5 percent. Just before the passage of Proposition 13, California’s iconic property tax limit, in 1978, state and local taxation was 12.2 percent of personal income, the nation’s fourth highest.

With property taxes reduced and then limited, California dropped to under 11 percent and its burden has varied only marginally in the nearly 40 years since, ranging from a low of 10.5 percent in the early years of the last decade to as high as 11.7 percent in 2010. If California was still taxing at the 12.2 percent pre-Proposition 13 level, it would mean about $15 billion more in state and local revenue each year and put California in a tie with New Jersey for No. 3 behind New York’s 12.7 percent and Connecticut’s 12.6 percent.

These statistics frame what is certain to be a contentious debate this year by elected state legislators regarding the state budget and also by opponents of at least one statewide ballot initiative which extends the ‘temporary’ surcharges on high income Californians that voters adopted in 2012. Were this initiative to pass, it’s impact would be $8 billion a year.

A few billion here, a few billion there...pretty soon we are talking about real money.

Pest Control Operators of California
www.pcoc.org

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