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Taxes/Taxation

A Review of Whitewater’s Economy is Like Peeling an Artichoke

Artichokes, of course, symbolize the idea of multi-layered things, of peeling back an exterior to discover an interior truth. Whitewater’s economy is like that – one needs to peel away layer upon layer of happy-talk headlines to address the truth of our present condition. (In a way, the only indubitable success those headlines assure is…

The Crazy-Wrong Argument on Taxes

A succinct truth: money doesn’t grow on trees. Local government funds municipal projects in one of three principal ways: through local taxes & fees, local borrowing (debt in the form of bonds), or public money from other jurisdictions (grants from the state or federal government). These grants of state or federal public money are, themselves,…

Corporate Welfare in America’s Dairyland (Yet Again)

The practice of thriving, multi-million-dollar companies taking ordinary taxpayers’ money to subsidize their private ventures has two aspects: (1) it’s wrong, as it takes from those with little and gives to those with much and (2) it’s sadly commonplace. Consider the case of Husco International, a private company in Wisconsin with an expectation of “more…

The Truth about the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation

A person should be able to make simple distinctions, as between the sensible and foolish, or practical and impractical. Sometimes those distinctions should be clear, and as stark as the difference between the contents of a sample cup and a glass of Chardonnay. You’ll hear a lot locally over the next few days about a…

The City of Whitewater’s 2013 Draft Budget: Crony Capitalism

So a multi-billion-dollar corporation (market cap $1.77 billion) wants thousands of taxpayer-dollars from a small city to fund a bus the corporation uses to shuttle her workers to and from other towns where they actually live.  The city being imposed upon is Whitewater, Wisconsin, a tiny municipality, like many others, struggling just to balance her annual operating budget. Whitewater’s situation involves juggling to find ways…

The City of Whitewater’s 2013 Draft Budget

Whitewater’s municipal administration released its draft 2013 budget to the public last Friday. I’ve linked to it below (where readers can review, download, or print the one-hundred fifty page document). Common Council will begin consideration of the budget tonight, with tonight’s discussion addressing a portion of the full proposal: Revenues-General Fund, Debt Service-Revenue and Expense,…

A little consistency would be in order

Around two years ago, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue changed the method by which municipalities valued private properties. The state concluded — correctly — that municipalities were often over-valuing and thus over-taxing private properties. For businesses, a correct, lower assessment meant less in taxes; for municipalities, an over-valuation was useful to extract as much in…