Hey Arnie:
Keep your grubby hands off of our industry. We don’t need you panning for gold in our stream because you cant get enough out of the Indian Casino or Lottery bank accounts. I am freakin sick and tired of all of these extra taxes we get nailed with by these stinkin politicians. I have a better idea. Go make another steroid movie and donate the proceeds to the state…you could use the write-off
California insurance buyers already pay a 3% tax on every premium dollar booked by admitted carriers. Premiums are not subject to sales tax as they are in some states. Taxes are also collected on Surplus Lines.
How about shutting down the State Legislature and turning it into what it should have been all along, a part time government body that meets four times a year to do the business for the State that needs to get done. Oh, thats right, they are already a part time government body! A well paid one at that.
The Governor calls it a fee. Then he claims the insurance industry has no objection.
What this really is is a tax. This is not a fee on something you can chose to do without if you don’t like the “fee.” Property insurance is a necessity in a free economy. A “fee” on something you have no choice other than to buy is by definition a tax.
The insurance industry, read insurers, don’t object. Why not? Because they need the Governor’s good will and this proposal costs them nothing. It is merely a pass through for them. They become the tax collector.
This proposal is dishonest and I hope the agent/broker associations call it what it is.
The “taxpayer advocate” quoted in this article betrays their ignorance of microeconomics. If you graph supply and demand and then show the effect of a tax, you see that who is “responsible for paying” the tax is irrelevant. The burden falls on both the seller and the buyer; the effect of the tax is that the seller receives less money and the cost increases for the buyer. No seller can “pass on” a tax 100% to the consumer because the higher price caused by the tax results in fewer units sold.
In an economy which is more and more service-based, it is hard to make an argument to justify why services should be tax-free. The only argument worth making is the argument against sales taxes in general, which are socially regressive. (Taxes on income with higher rates for higher income brackets are progressive, as are wealth taxes and property taxes.)
two things strike me as strange about this: the first being “part” of the tax is to cover firefighting costs – but why are those majority of property owners who didn’t build “in harms way” have to bail out the dummies that did? and the second being that the headline for the tax was that it was to cover firefighting costs, but then further on it says “partially” to cover firefighting costs. where is the rest going to go? foodstamps?
Hey Arnie:
Keep your grubby hands off of our industry. We don’t need you panning for gold in our stream because you cant get enough out of the Indian Casino or Lottery bank accounts. I am freakin sick and tired of all of these extra taxes we get nailed with by these stinkin politicians. I have a better idea. Go make another steroid movie and donate the proceeds to the state…you could use the write-off
Well, why doesn’t he also just add taxes on burial expenses, if not already taxed?
This smells just like the govumint tax collectors in POPEYE THE SAILOR MAN cartoons!
California insurance buyers already pay a 3% tax on every premium dollar booked by admitted carriers. Premiums are not subject to sales tax as they are in some states. Taxes are also collected on Surplus Lines.
How about shutting down the State Legislature and turning it into what it should have been all along, a part time government body that meets four times a year to do the business for the State that needs to get done. Oh, thats right, they are already a part time government body! A well paid one at that.
The Governor calls it a fee. Then he claims the insurance industry has no objection.
What this really is is a tax. This is not a fee on something you can chose to do without if you don’t like the “fee.” Property insurance is a necessity in a free economy. A “fee” on something you have no choice other than to buy is by definition a tax.
The insurance industry, read insurers, don’t object. Why not? Because they need the Governor’s good will and this proposal costs them nothing. It is merely a pass through for them. They become the tax collector.
This proposal is dishonest and I hope the agent/broker associations call it what it is.
The “taxpayer advocate” quoted in this article betrays their ignorance of microeconomics. If you graph supply and demand and then show the effect of a tax, you see that who is “responsible for paying” the tax is irrelevant. The burden falls on both the seller and the buyer; the effect of the tax is that the seller receives less money and the cost increases for the buyer. No seller can “pass on” a tax 100% to the consumer because the higher price caused by the tax results in fewer units sold.
In an economy which is more and more service-based, it is hard to make an argument to justify why services should be tax-free. The only argument worth making is the argument against sales taxes in general, which are socially regressive. (Taxes on income with higher rates for higher income brackets are progressive, as are wealth taxes and property taxes.)
two things strike me as strange about this: the first being “part” of the tax is to cover firefighting costs – but why are those majority of property owners who didn’t build “in harms way” have to bail out the dummies that did? and the second being that the headline for the tax was that it was to cover firefighting costs, but then further on it says “partially” to cover firefighting costs. where is the rest going to go? foodstamps?