Word: taxing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Miami-Dade County, to the south, where 1 in 4 homeowners is 30 days or more behind in his or her mortgage payments, residents are bracing for what Mayor Carlos Alvarez says could be an imminent property-tax hike to fill an almost $400 million budget hole - a move that veteran Miami realtors like Alex Shay insist would set recovery back. "It's out of line," says Shay, who recently took Alvarez to task on his Miami Real Estate blog. "A lot of people here are barely holding on to their properties, using credit-card advances to pay escrow...
Welcome to Florida, the land of no income taxes - and killer property taxes. Whether it's a nightmare for someone who just purchased a Florida foreclosure or a tax hike that proves the last straw for some struggling homeowner, it's bad news for the individual, and increasingly for the state. It's also a painful reminder of the halcyon days when Florida's economy could lazily rely on soaring real estate prices - and related taxes - to pour ever more money into government coffers. Now local governments say they're broke, thanks to the housing bust, and many are trying...
What has brought California to such a perilous state? How did its government become so wildly dysfunctional? One obvious cause is the deep recession, which has caused tax revenues to plunge for all states. But California's woes have a set of deeper reasons: direct democracy run amok, timid governors, partisan gridlock and a flawed constitution have all contributed to budget chaos and people in pain. And at the root of California's misery lies Proposition 13, the antitax measure that ignited the Reagan Revolution and the conservative era. In Washington, the Reagan-Bush era is over. But in California...
...Roosevelt. Both shared an affinity for designing deep structural change that, once embedded in the political system, is nearly impossible to alter without a massive change of heart by voters. Social Security is the lasting legacy of the New Deal era because F.D.R. understood that workers who contribute payroll-tax deductions from their paychecks would not want politicians tinkering with their retirement dollars. Conservatives have mounted assaults on Social Security through the years but to no avail...
Jarvis created a similarly impregnable institution. When he rode the wave of anger over skyrocketing property-tax assessments to pass Proposition 13 in 1978, he included a two-thirds vote requirement for the passage of any new taxes in California - an insurmountable obstacle built on populist allergy to any kind of new levy. Beholden to a tax-averse electorate, the state's liberals and moderates have attempted to live with Proposition 13 while continuing to provide the state services Californians expect - freeways, higher education, prisons, assistance to needy families and, very important, essential funding to local government and school districts...