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Budget & Taxes Chicago Mayor to Propose Major Property Tax Hike To help cover the cost of a big pension payment for police and firefighters next year and help shrink his city’s annual budget hole, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will reportedly...

Budget & Taxes WV COMMITS TO PAYING DOWN PENSION DEBT: West Virginia's unfunded pension liability - estimated at $10 billion last year - is one of the highest per capita in the nation. But the state became a standout on the issue in a very...

c Budget & Taxes FL JUDGE SIDES AGAINST STATE IN PENSION CASE: A Florida circuit court ruled last week that Gov. Rick Scott (R) and Republican legislative leaders' decision last year to cut public employee salaries to offset the state's...

The hot tax news is that President Obama has proposed extending the so-called Bush tax cuts but only for the middle class, not for the people the President thinks are rich. (If he gets what he wants can we start calling them the Obama tax cuts?) Apparently...

There's a lot of serious news out there - tragedy, health care, a nuclear Iran. It seems the news of the day roars at us. But if you turn down the sound, you can hear it: tick, tick, tick. What is it, you say? It's the federal tax system,...

Budget & Taxes States Consider Taxing Non-Profits Under Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s (R) proposed budget, nonprofits in the state would lose their exemption from local property taxes. LePage’s plan is to lower the state income tax from...

Budget & Taxes Snyder Proposes $195 Million for Flint Amidst a chorus of boos from protestors, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) unveiled his $54.9 billion FY 2017 budget proposal to lawmakers, a plan that includes $195 million to address the ongoing...

Budget & Taxes UT’s Gas Tax Hike Strategy Nearly every state in the nation is struggling to maintain its aging transportation system. But Utah is one of just seven states (the others are Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and...

Budget & Taxes Some Republicans Embracing Tax Hikes After Republicans swept into control of 29 governor’s offices and 25 state legislatures in the 2010 elections, they moved aggressively to cut spending and taxes. The cuts continued the...

Budget & Taxes Oil Price Collapse Pressures State Budgets The collapse of oil prices is taking a toll on energy-producing states. As job losses mount in the nation’s oil patch, depressed oil and commodity prices are having a ripple effect...

Budget & Taxes LA GOV PROPOSES TAX-CREDIT CHANGES: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's (R) administration proposed a 2016 budget last month that included deep cuts that would close community health clinics and historic sites, as well as force more...

In 1963, Nicholas Kaldor published a paper in Foreign Affairs about the ongoing fiscal problems of poor countries, entitled " Will Underdeveloped Countries Learn to Tax? " It turns out Kaldor should have aimed this advice at his own country...

Budget & Taxes SUPREME COURT TO DECIDE FATE OF CO TABOR: Colorado's Taxpayer's Bill of Rights — requiring lawmakers to obtain voter approval to raise taxes and to issue refunds to taxpayers when revenues grow faster than inflation...

Budget & Taxes Puerto Rican Debt Threat to U.S. Cities, States In an interview with The New York Times last month, Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro García Padilla said the U.S. commonwealth wasn’t able to pay its roughly $72 billion in...

Budget & Taxes Final PA Budget Unlikely Until After April Primary Days before last Christmas - and six months after the start of the current fiscal year - Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled Legislature sent Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf a...