Same dung, different cycle. If you think taxes are worse now than they were in the 70s and 80s, I'd say the deja vu is ardent.
There was a time in this country (back in the 50s and 60s) where the highest tax rate on income was near 90%, and corporate tax rates were several times higher than now.
We've fooled ourselves into thinking that CA is "the worst for taxes" when we aren't. We certainly don't carry the lowest tax burden, but this isn't a race for the top or bottom, but what you get for it.
I'd argue one of the daftest things about US discourse on taxes is the absolutism of whether "taxation is theft" (it isn't, it's part of the cost of doing business as a country) but what is the return on the service quality of those taxes, are their uses auditable, is the transparency around them good...it usually isn't, but then we also do nothing to improve that, which makes most of our perpetually binary and dumb tax talk that much more annoying.
Here's a practical example: I hire people from California. I had to fill out multiple forms and now pay extra tax just for those guys. I don't have to do this anywhere else.
California is famous for squandering wealth on huge projects, aren't they? Wasn't like 60k per homeless person spent? We live on different planets.
It's awful to do business in/with California, sorry. And yes their taxes are awful. The worst in the USA dude, I'm so confused..? Who is worse?
There was a time in this country (back in the 50s and 60s) where the highest tax rate on income was near 90%, and corporate tax rates were several times higher than now.
We've fooled ourselves into thinking that CA is "the worst for taxes" when we aren't. We certainly don't carry the lowest tax burden, but this isn't a race for the top or bottom, but what you get for it.
I'd argue one of the daftest things about US discourse on taxes is the absolutism of whether "taxation is theft" (it isn't, it's part of the cost of doing business as a country) but what is the return on the service quality of those taxes, are their uses auditable, is the transparency around them good...it usually isn't, but then we also do nothing to improve that, which makes most of our perpetually binary and dumb tax talk that much more annoying.