2012 September Budget & Tax News

The September issue of Budget & Tax News reports President Barack Obama has asked Congress to take up legislation that extends for only one year the Bush-era tax rates, only for families earning less than $250,000 a year. Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Peter Ferrara noted, “Temporary tax relief does not work to promote the economy, as Obama should have learned by now.”

Also in this issue:

• In a result that surprised both the left and the right, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the individual mandate at the heart of Obama’s health care law is constitutional, not on the basis of the Commerce Clause, but as a tax--an argument the White House itself had not advanced before the Supreme Court.

• States across the country have accumulated at least $900 billion in off-balance-sheet liabilities, potentially leaving future taxpayers with much heavier tax burdens than states currently are imposing.

• The small town of Bridgeview, Illinois has tripled property taxes to pay for a city-owned soccer stadium that has failed to generate the promised operational revenues and regional economic benefits that stadium backers had touted. The town built the stadium with $135 million in general-obligation bonds.

• New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced plans to hold a fire sale of unused trains purchased by the state as part of a failed high-speed rail project.

• Amazon.com Inc. is planning to partner with at least one California city to collect sales taxes from the entire state. Most of the collected tax money would go back to Amazon.

• State and local governments in Illinois collectively owe more than $200 billion in retirement benefits for government workers, according to a report by the Illinois Policy Institute.