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Schwarzenegger takes down the Deficit Clock in front of his office | AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli
The plassed budget has four main aspects, which Scwharzenegger compares to a four-legged stool: spending reductions, revenue increases (aka taxing you more), use of the economic stimulus and government efficiency.
At the street level, we'll feel it the most with the 1% sales tax increase, which will begin on April 1st. Currently, LA County has an 8.25% sales tax, but in November voters passed Measure R--the transportation tax--allowing the county to raise it to 8.75% on July 1st. Now with the additional state sales tax bump, we'll see it at 9.75% for a few years.
Also, the vehicle license fee will nearly double and state income tax will increase by 0.5%. The Sacramento Bee has a special calculator so you can figure out your additional expenses. We just clocked in at $260 a year.
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Are you kidding me with that "deficit clock" sign, though? Way to be serious about this.
argh
$98 for me, but I don't own a personal vehicle or have any kids.
I was looking over the four legged stool, (if that's the kind of stool you want to call it), and I didn't see any mention of Public Transportation cuts.
In George Skelton's column this am he listed $480,000,000 in cuts for PT, but his information was from last night and didn't include the current compromises that finally got this thing passed.
I'm curious how Public Transpo finally came out?
Anyone know?
Can I add that 9.75% is really high. OR has no sales tax. I'm no expert but can't we just, oh I dunno, repeal Prop 13 first?????
Are all those people still getting laid off? Do state workers till get forced to take 2 days off with out pay? What about tax refunds? Does this budget fix any of that ish?
ARGH!
Bear in mind that the extra $.05 sale tax we pay here STAYS HERE. That's one reason why I voted for it.
I expect we'll see our state tax returns soon. What I wonder is if we'll see any interest on them. They've been holding onto my state refund for about a month now, so I plan to raise hell if they don't pay some interest.
"extra $.05"
Oops, I meant $0.005 sales tax.
For realz. I've already got my federal refund. Who knew the feds could be so competent? I guess in comparison to the government of the state of California, anything looks great...
YES!!! We sorely need to repeal Prop 13 already, to hell with the Republican whiners!
I don't mind paying the extra .50% for the subway to the Santa Monica, the subway to the airport and the subway to Woodland Hills. It's the extra 1.00% going to the state that irks me.
Nice. That sales tax is really going to stimulate me to spend my money at local stores to get that economy back on track! Or.....maybe not.
There's a $42B deficit, so you cut $15B and expect extra tax $14B, does that come out to $42B? NOPE.
But I'm glad to have read that the leadership in the Assembly and Senate expect $14B in extra taxes with the calculation of a drop in spending and income.
Yes, let's repeal Prop 13 to give the irresponsible DEMOCRATIC Party led Sacramento easier access to extra cash to put us deeper in debt just to pay off their union friends.
If anything Prop 13 has kept the state solvent because the govt is limited. They need to stop spending more than they make, and realize when things are one time gains (tech and real estate) and create a rainy day fund.
Trojie, let's not be too dishonest shall we?
It took years of reaching budget impasses and punting the debt off into the next year to give us the $42B deficit. Most of these taxes are supposed to be "temporary", in order to wipe out that deficit in the next two to four years.
But you knew that.
What I don't understand is why so many people voted in November for sales tax to go up and only just now seem to have figured out that, duh, we're getting taxed higher now partly because of this. I guess our corrupt governement benefiting from how many idiots don't pay attention to stuff. "Oh, it's only another half a cent if I vote for xxx," they think, not calculating how all this adds up. I'm pissed about our local and state government, don't get me wrong, but there are a lot of idiotic voters in this state too who are not helping matters. Voters chose to raise our sales tax and now seem shocked at how high it is about to be. Highest in the nation. Congratulations.
I'll do all my major shopping on one day at the end of the month across the county line. Groceries, my new TV, the furniture I need for my new place, all the other household goods, very much worth it in the gas to drive 15 miles. Or I'll do as much online as possible. The hike in taxes is never-ending. Once they pay off what they need to with the extra, they'll get accostomed to it and find a way to spend and spend and spend. Give a politician a dollar, he'll spend two. That is the way it works.