Tax Reform
Americans are a hard-working bunch and should keep what they earn. Our ideas for tax reform reduce the burden of taxes while ensuring governments have the resources to focus on core responsibilities.
Every year, people and their income move between states. They move for a number of reasons, but there’s ample evidence that cost of living and its relationship to tax burdens are a factor.
Since 2001, the federal tax code allowed business owners to write off more of the investment they make in their company each year and, today, businesses can write off 100 percent of the capital investments they made this year. But if Congress and the President don’t act, that tax cut will end in January 2012. State policymakers, on the other hand, could offer a little certainty in their state income tax code by allowing businesses to immediately write-off on their taxes the full value of their new capital investments.
On November 10, 2011, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker keynoted the Goldwater Institute Annual Dinner.
Goldwater Institute senior economist Stephen Slivinski went on 3TV to analyze GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan.
PHOENIX — In Arizona and across the country, small business owners and entrepreneurs spend billions of dollars and countless hours complying with regulations. But a new recommendation from the Goldwater Institute could offer these businesses help – and boost the jobs outlook along the way.
Excessive regulation is needlessly destructive to the economy and job creation – and the Goldwater Institute’s annual Legislative Report Card shows that elected officials in both parties fail to recognize the problem.
Months after the housing bubble burst in 2007, Arizona passed a state budget that many knew was out of balance the day it was passed. By summer of 2007, there was even talk of having a special session to fix the situation.
When state legislatures reconvene in January, a priority for many will be passing some kind of “jobs” bill. What form that might take is open to debate, but there are already lessons to be learned on what not to do.
In 2009 the Arizona legislature, like many other states, passed a bill providing “tax incentives” (AKA subsidies) for renewable-energy industries. The legislature partly responded to pressure from those who thought they’d found the next big thing in "green jobs." It also followed on the heels of a new solar panel factory in Tucson, Arizona.
Despite Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the national credit rating, the federal government’s rating is still better than Arizona’s.
Our rating, AA-, is the same as Kentucky, Michigan, and New Jersey. Not exactly state’s that are pictures of economic health. In fact, 44 states have a better credit rating than Arizona, including all of our regional competitors: Colorado (AA), Nevada (AA), New Mexico (AA+), Texas (AA+), and Utah (AAA). Only two states in the country have worse ratings, including California, which has the lowest rating (A-).