Where are the "missing" votes?

They're coming, and I'll show you.

Perhaps you've seen this chart circulating. Let me show you why it's wrong, and demonstrate to you that this year's totals will slightly exceed 2020's. 1/ In 2020, Biden won 81 million votes to Trump's 74 million, with 158.4 million total votes cast.

Right now, there are about 72 million for Trump and 68 million for Harris, yielding 142.3 million votes cast.

Are 15 million votes missing? No, they just haven't been counted yet. 2/

You don't have to dig deeply into the Washington supreme court's decision in the capital gains tax case to find egregious errors. There's an obvious, and crucial, falsehood in the second paragraph. The amount a taxpayer owes has nothing to do with the number of transactions, the number of shares, or anything other than the *aggregate net income gains* from these assets. If it were levied on the sale or exchange, surely it would involve the transactions in some way!

I know I couldn't land an airliner, but I have a question for people who actually know planes: how much of the work could the autoland system (likely) do?

washingtonpost.com/travel/2023/03… I know actual pilots don't always like them and have to monitor them closely, but I don't know if that's because they almost always require some adjustment, or if there's just a high enough probability of error.

Let's talk about that @wallethub map that appears to rank California 12th best (8.97% effective rate) for tax liability and Texas 41st (12.73%). But first, I'm going to show you a more accurate remapping using *their own calculations,* then we can talk about what's going on. @wallethub WalletHub calculated overall effective tax rates (taking income, sales and excise, real property, and vehicle taxes into account) for a roughly median household in each state. Actually they ran it twice: the *national* median household placed in each state, then the state median.

The wealth taxes and high net worth individual taxes rolling out today.🧵#statetax 1. California: a two-tier wealth tax on the worldwide wealth (tangible and intangible, financial and non-financial) of high net worth individuals (1% > $50 million, 1.5% > $1 billion). #caleg #capolitics #wealthtax

Due to an ARPA provision, federal student loan forgiveness wouldn't be a federally taxable event, but it would trigger state income tax liability in some states. Many states conform to current federal definitions of taxable income. These states would follow the federal government in not taxing the discharge of indebtedness.

Some have up-to-date conformity but exclude ARPA provisions. Absent separate exclusions, these could tax. (cont.)

California approved a substantial new tax on lithium mining in the state. Lithium mining has significant environmental costs, and internalizing externalities is a legitimate role of taxation -- but I'm not sure the legislature's logic checks out here. 1/

news.yahoo.com/california-app… Severance taxes on mining are de rigueur, but if special taxes or tax rates are placed on specific extractive activity, they ought to be associated with differential externalities. Here, we're talking $400-800 per ton of lithium in California, on top of other taxes. 2/

States and localities can't figure out how to spend the $350 billion in aid they received under ARPA, so Treasury has responded by dramatically expanding eligible expenditures. Now, just about any new spending on affordable housing, child care, schools, etc., is a COVID response. Under a newly promulgated final rule on Fiscal Recovery Funds, far more expenditures are allowed, the definition of retaining gov't employment levels has been expanded to include increasing government employment, and the definition of revenue loss now covers some revenue gains.

When 16 states enacted or implemented income tax cuts last year, they did it out of growth (no spending cuts). More states are looking to do the same this year.

But in Mississippi, the PIT repeal plan under consideration is likely to shrink government.

taxfoundation.org/mississippi-in… Mississippi's PIT phase-out plan uses revenue triggers that will only allow reductions to proceed if revenues keep growing in *nominal* terms, but they can fall short in real terms because the bill sets an artificially low inflation adjustment, especially for today's inflation.

For context, $163 billion in new taxes would *double* California's pre-pandemic tax collections, and it would be adopted despite a 30% surge in collections and an anticipated $31 billion annual surplus.

https://twitter.com/CalTax/status/1479152853591543810

The California LAO's current forecast is $51 billion above the biennial budget's numbers. And there are lawmakers who want another $163 billion a year on top of this?

I love a good historical example, but I'm not terribly convinced by this @taxjustice piece holding up classical Athens as an exemplar of progressive taxation embraced by the wealthy, and don't know how you'd distinguish it from, say, all of feudalism. 1/

taxjustice.medium.com/tax-avoidance-… The basic premise here is that the wealthiest Athenians paid a wealth tax to fund military and religious expenses, and that they took pride in these duties, in contrast to today's wealthy. I'm skeptical on a number of points. 2/

This has struck a chord, and I've seen lots of questions about what happens next. (No, you cannot establish yourself as the official government of Hartford County, sorry.) THREAD. 1/

taxfoundation.org/american-rescu… This is a genuine mess, and the solutions will be imperfect at best. For nonfunctional counties, Treasury will most likely allocate the money to the states for distribution to localities within the county on a per capita basis. But this raises issues. 2/

A benefit that (combined with state regular UC) gets most people to about 95% salary replacement through September seems better than one that gets most >100% but expires sooner. But exempting the first $10,200 from tax creates problems. Short thread.

https://twitter.com/ylanmui/status/1367870111781097478

(1) Many people have already filed and will have to file amended returns. Making benefits available as long as needed seems way more important than this complicated retroactive provision, which requires changing tax forms or instructions.

Senate amendments to the American Rescue Plan Act impose restrictions on the use of the $350 billion in state and local aid.

CAN'T

- Use for tax cuts
- Deposit in pension fund

CAN

- Cover pandemic expenses
- Backfill pandemic-era revenue losses
- Do water/sewer/broadband

1/ Almost half the states saw revenue increases during the pandemic. Typically not as high as projected, but sometimes exceeding projections. Losses frequently way less than aid. So what do you spend it on if you didn't lose much revenue? Lots and lots of rural broadband? 2/

I want to see actual bill text, but the abstract of Gov. Justice's income tax repeal plan in West Virginia has some notable features:

Good: across-the-board rate reductions, unlike the MS approach of phased exemptions; in first stage, rates range from 1.2-2.6%.

#wvpol #wvleg 1/ The initial PIT reductions only applies to wage, salary, retirement, and unemployment income, not business income, investment income, farm income, etc. If the goal is economic growth, no relief for small businesses or entrepreneurs is surprising (and nonneutral).

2/

While it's true that the coronavirus relief bill doesn't have anything designated as state and local aid, there's actually about $127 billion in there that can shore up state budgets -- which, remember, were down only $37 billion total through the end of September. 1/ The $82B in additional education grants and $45B for transportation projects has to be spent on education and transportation, but it's not contingent on states maintaining their own spending levels. They can use that federal infusion to redirect their own revenues. 2/

An interesting tension in Biden's memoir:

- Biden outlines essentially a natural law viewpoint, with courts to uphold God-given rights prior to and above written law
- He seems to situate abortion within these God-given rights
- But he believes abortion is against God's will Here he spells out something that looks pretty similar to a natural law philosophy. He just says "natural rights" but emphasizes that they're God-given and believes them prior to and above human law, but enforceable by human courts:

If people who throw axes while under the influence of alcohol are going "nah, too dangerous for me," your reopening is going to take a while. bisnow.com/atlanta/news/r… When and how to lift business restrictions is a really complicated issue, and I don't have the answer. Georgia's doing it faster than seems advisable to me, but lots of other states are starting phased re-openings. A few notes:

Today we launched a visual guide to unemployment benefit claims, which we will be updating weekly with each Thursday's data release. The numbers are sobering. A few notes on understanding these figures: 1/ taxfoundation.org/unemployment-i… Timing matters a lot. It will take at least another 1-2 weeks to have a strong sense of which states are facing the worst crisis. Right now there are challenges in disentangling timing of closure orders, pace of processing UI claims, reporting lags, from larger considerations. 2/

The Senate is taking up the Treasury rule disallowing SALT deduction cap workarounds today. Overriding a regulation under the CRA is rare but not unprecedented, particularly recently. The resolution is privileged, meaning that it's expedited and gets a guaranteed floor vote. 1/ Suspending a regulation under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) requires a simple majority vote in both chambers and a presidential signature. At least one Democrat, Sen. Bennet (CO), is opposed to overturning the rule, which would almost exclusively benefit high earners. 2/