Heartland Institute 2013 December Budget & Tax News

The December issue of Budget & Tax News reports California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill to give 100 percent relief to approximately 2,500 small business investors who had been threatened with retroactive collection of $120 million in capital gains taxes. “The sense of relief is indescribable, said Brian Overstreet, who spearheaded efforts to protect the state’s innovators from the tax.

Also in this issue:

The National Football League, technically a nonprofit organization, is allowed to negotiate contracts that would be illegal for companies like Apple or Exxon, and it’s able to use its financial and political muscle to get freebies from city and state governments, including taxpayer-funded stadiums and free sewer and water service.

More than two years after she applied to the city government in Bloomington, Illinois for a license to operate a late-night van service, Julie Crowe finally will be allowed to start her business, thanks to a court decision upholding her right to earn a living. The court ruling is a badly needed blow against business licensure laws that protect entrenched businesses against new competitors.

Expenditures on food stamps have grown from $38 billion, with 28.2 million recipients, in 2008 to $78 billion, with 46.6 million recipients, in 2012, an increase of 105 percent in dollars spent and 65 percent in number of recipients. Meanwhile, a growing number of Americans have joined the ranks of food-stamp recipients in order to increase their consumption of ‘unapproved’ goods.

Should people who braid hair have to build an entire barber college and become state-licensed barbering instructors just to teach hair-braiding? That will be decided by a federal lawsuit recently filed against the State of Texas by Dallas hair-braider Isis Brantley and the Institute for Justice. A victory would promote economic liberty throughout Texas and beyond.

Legislators in the United States and across the world are proposing new taxes on certain financial transactions, including securities trading and stock transactions. Several countries in Europe already have implemented such a tax. Proponents are trying to build momentum for such a tax in the United States.

A hearing of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee made it painfully clear that neither the assembled witnesses nor any of the Senators had any clue as to how to come up with the hundreds of billions of dollars transportation boosters say are needed to fund the next transportation bill reauthorization. Fortunately, many states aren’t waiting for the financially troubled federal government to come up with new money. They are assuming control of their infrastructure agendas by using other sources of capital.