The Sacramento Bee is reporting the California Teachers Association is busy qualifying a measure to repeal about $1.7 billion dollars in tax benefits for corporations currently in place, or about to go into effect in the next budget year. First and foremost, for the record, repealing these benefits is a bad idea. Right now we need to be freeing up the capital of corporations so that they can grow, thrive, and create private sector jobs.
Now, that having been said, the bulk of the tax benefits that are targeted by the CTA are, in my opinion, ill-gotten gains from the February 2009 budget deal where taxpayers got slammed with $16 billion dollars of income, sales and car taxes, as well as loss of some of the dependent tax credit, and also the same deal spawned a ballot measure that would have doubled the length of those tax increases. Somehow as part of the deal, while taxes went up on the people of California, big-business got a bunch a tax breaks. And, go figure, the "business community" rallied around the deal, which in my opinion, stunk. It was corporations looking out for their own best interests and walking away from a coalition to oppose higher taxes on anyone, individuals or businesses.
Let me quickly add a bit of praise for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association who led the coalition – sans big business – to stop the part of the tax increases put before the voters.
That said, unfortunately the CTA did not sponsor a measure that would have repealed the business tax benefits and taken that money to instead lower the sales, income or car tax to "right the wrong" that was done last year. Instead, the CTA wants to end the benefits and take that "savings" (it’s not really savings since ending the benefits will cost the state revenue in lost jobs) and spend it in ways that are in line with the CTA’s ONLY two goals: increasing the salary and benefits for its members, and growing the number of members they have.
Welcome to the politics of Sacramento — and add one more ballot measure to the long list we’re likely to see this November. Another measure to oppose.