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This annual publication provides details of taxes paid on wages in OECD countries. It covers personal income taxes and social security contributions paid by employees, social security contributions and payroll taxes paid by employers, and cash benefits received by workers. Taxing Wages 2021 includes a special feature entitled: “Impact of COVID-19 on the Tax Wedge in OECD Countries”.
The use of property tax incentives for business by local governments throughout the United States has escalated over the last 50 years. While there is little evidence that these tax incentives are an effective instrument to promote economic development, they cost state and local governments $5 to $10 billion each year in forgone revenue. Three major obstacles can impede the success of property tax incentives as an economic development tool. First, incentives are unlikely to have a significant impact on a firm's profitability since property taxes are a small part of the total costs for most businesses--averaging much less than 1 percent of total costs for the U.S. manufacturing sector. Second, tax breaks are sometimes given to businesses that would have chosen the same location even without the incentives. When this happens, property tax incentives merely deplete the tax base without promoting economic development. Third, widespread use of incentives within a metropolitan area reduces their effectiveness, because when firms can obtain similar tax breaks in most jurisdictions, incentives are less likely to affect business location decisions. This report reviews five types of property tax incentives and examines their characteristics, costs, and effectiveness: property tax abatement programs; tax increment finance; enterprise zones; firm-specific property tax incentives; and property tax exemptions in connection with issuance of industrial development bonds. Alternatives to tax incentives should be considered by policy makers, such as customized job training, labor market intermediaries, and business support services. State and local governments also can pursue a policy of broad-based taxes with low tax rates or adopt split-rate property taxation with lower taxes on buildings than land.State policy makers are in a good position to increase the effectiveness of property tax incentives since they control how local governments use them. For example, states can restrict the use of incentives to certain geographic areas or certain types of facilities; publish information on the use of property tax incentives; conduct studies on their effectiveness; and reduce destructive local tax competition by not reimbursing local governments for revenue they forgo when they award property tax incentives.Local government officials can make wiser use of property tax incentives for business and avoid such incentives when their costs exceed their benefits. Localities should set clear criteria for the types of projects eligible for incentives; limit tax breaks to mobile facilities that export goods or services out of the region; involve tax administrators and other stakeholders in decisions to grant incentives; cooperate on economic development with other jurisdictions in the area; and be clear from the outset that not all businesses that ask for an incentive will receive one.Despite a generally poor record in promoting economic development, property tax incentives continue to be used. The goal is laudable: attracting new businesses to a jurisdiction can increase income or employment, expand the tax base, and revitalize distressed urban areas. In a best case scenario, attracting a large facility can increase worker productivity and draw related firms to the area, creating a positive feedback loop. This report offers recommendations to improve the odds of achieving these economic development goals.
The Money Machines advances the provocative thesis that the mechanisms for financing state and local government in the Northern United States from 1860 to 1920 were deeply enmeshed with those financing the extralegal--often illegal--activities of the major political parties, complicating reform or change mandated by the post-Civil War breakdown of the North's legal fiscal machinery. Few reformers then recognized the interdependence of government and the party money machines; fewer still acknowledged the effectiveness or social value of the extralegal machines. On the contrary, basic fiscal reform in this period was characterized by attempts to exorcise "politics" in any form, which in turn provoked counteraction from politicians whose organizations had the same need for efficient, reliable revenue systems as did governments. Dr. Yearley demonstrates the failure of the established legal money machines to cope with the demands of postwar governments facing industrialization and urbanization. He characterizes the revolt of old and new middle classes against fiscal inequity and inefficiency and shows how much of the North's new wealth escaped taxation altogether while much of its old wealth similarly went into hiding. Because of its forbidding complexities, tax reform was sustained by a small group of experts from the middle class, whose sincerity and competence were unquestionable, but whose reformism evidenced the peculiar views and prejudices of their class. Here, therefore, the graft-grabbing politician is presented in a fresh light. In his efforts to maintain his sources of revenue and power, he emerges as a vital instrument of mass democracy, of the new politics of the ever-growing urban lower classes as well as their principal source of government welfare or support. The author reevaluates the Gilded Age politician in several important ways, principally regarding his power relationship to the business communities and his ability to perform his job well despite middle class disdain and continual allegations of fraud and incompetence. Further, Dr. Yearley shows that often politicians were ahead of reformers in their fiscal thinking in recognizing and utilizing taxation of income rather than of property. The volume considers in some depth several individual reformers, revealing them to be, among other things, prototypes of present academic experts used by government to manage problems too complex for laymen. The book then proceeds to explain essential changes made in local fiscal systems and which of these were to be the most effective, explanations that are of particular interest in view of the continuing crises in state and local financing today.
A New York Times best-selling call to arms from Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman. The Great Recession is more than four years old—and counting. Yet, as Paul Krugman points out in this powerful volley, "Nations rich in resources, talent, and knowledge—all the ingredients for prosperity and a decent standard of living for all—remain in a state of intense pain." How bad have things gotten? How did we get stuck in what now can only be called a depression? And above all, how do we free ourselves? Krugman pursues these questions with his characteristic lucidity and insight. He has a powerful message for anyone who has suffered over these past four years—a quick, strong recovery is just one step away, if our leaders can find the "intellectual clarity and political will" to end this depression now.