@wmata You may ask why do all that drastic stuff to cut your budget by 2%? Isn't there any easier way to get 2% savings?
I ask that too.
Part of this is pessimistic projections. WMATA brought in $784m in fares in FY 2019, $580m in FY 2020 (half in the pandemic), $180m in FY 2021, and is projecting just $222m for FY 2022 (the year starting July 1, 2021).
The plan proposes dismissing ~2,500 of Metro's 12,675 employees. But personnel costs drop only 6% from $1.31b to $1.24b.
Fringe benefits barely drop, from $447m to $437m. Pension costs go up, from $165m to $169m.
On the Metrorail sub-budget, cutting service from 10 trains
an hour to trains an hour doesn't save money on anything except electricity:
Personnel: goes up 0.5%, $775m to $778m.
Outsourced Services: goes up 5%, $146m to $153m
Supplies: up 9%, $64m to $70m
Fringe benefits will be $52,306 per employee, or 50% of average pay
WMATA has 240 employees in their Financial Operations division under their CFO. Here's the full document they came up with:
As a reminder, the new law imposes a gross receipts tax ranging from 2.5% to 10% on revenues derived from digital advertising services in MD. The tax applies to companies with global revenues from all sources of $100 million+, and no deductions for expenses are permitted.
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The tax must be paid on a quarterly basis throughout the year, with the first payment due April 15, 2021, and fines and penalties for failure to file up to five years’ imprisonment.
Connecticut, Indiana, Montana, and Oregon, are also considering new digital tax legislation.
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MILLIONS of Americans this year telecommuted from their homes for the first time instead of working full-time in an office. Next April, many of those Americans (we at NTUF estimate at least 2.1 million) will be surprised to learn....
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...something that tax professionals generally understand: if you work somewhere for more than a few days, you will owe income tax in that jurisdiction.
Massachusetts seeks a further surprise:...
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abruptly expanding the scope of its income tax to cover people who used to commute to Massachusetts but currently work in another state due to the pandemic. Under that state's regulation, if you were working in Massachusetts last year or in January or February of this year...
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Egon Krenz had become East Germany's new - and as it turned out, last - dictator after the Politburo deposed Erich Honecker to try to appease protestors demanding reforms.
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The new leader set about to try to reduce the repressive image of the regime, naming Günter Schabowski to the job of press spokesman, and on Thursday, November 9, 1989, the Politburo voted to allow East Germans to travel in a controlled fashion to the West.
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And the Metroliner launched by the Pennsylvania Railroad on the same NY to DC route in 1969 took 2 hours, 30 minutes: 5 minutes faster than this new train.
(The Metroliner came about after President Lyndon Johnson called for high-speed trains in his 1965 State of the Union, setting a goal of a Boston-Washington travel time of 4 hours. Boston to Washington in 4 hours would be a 112 mph average speed.)