Posts Tagged ‘cta’

The Socialist Worker newspaper has endorsed the tax hike agenda being forwarded by the California Teachers Association (CTA) and the California Budget Project.  Their answer to California’s budget woes is simple – raise taxes on businesses and business property.  Socialist Worker’s Andy Libson (a San Francisco teacher) writes that this is “the only plan that makes sense in a world run by anyone other than crooks and sadists.”

The California Budget Project is a union front that purports to “improve public policies … through independent research, budget and policy analysis”.  The group’s pro-tax Executive Director is Jean Ross, a former researcher for Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a large California state worker union.  Ross also sits on the Board of the California Tax Reform Association, another pro-tax union front.

The CTA and California Budget Project have proposed a host of tax hikes on businesses, including raising corporate taxes, removing tax breaks for corporations, raising the top bracket on income taxes, and repealing Proposition 12 to raise property taxes on businesses. Other tax hike proponents have proposed an additional business taxes, the Business Net Receipts Tax (BNRT), a 4 percent tax on gross income, payroll, and interest.

Even as California state worker unions and their allies agitate for tax hikes, other high-tax states worry that tax hikes could backfire.  New York’s tax hikes on the wealthy resulted in tax revenues 20 percent below estimates.  Past experience has shown that “tax the rich” schemes result in short-term increases followed by reduced growth and job losses, as the wealthy take their businesses and capital elsewhere.

The CTA and their allies are undeterred.  “It’s the job of socialists, radicals and anyone else who is sick of giving in to the rich”, says Socialist Worker, “No more concessions, tax the rich.’”