Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas Bill Gates Sr. has personally contributed $500000 to promote a statewide proposition on Washingtons November ballot to impose a brand new 5 tax on individuals earning over $200000 per year & couples earning over $400000 per year. An additional 4 surcharge would be levied on individuals & couples earning more than $500000 and $1 million respectively.
Doing so would put the states economy at risk says Arthur Laffer chairman of Laffer Associates.
To imagine what such a large soak-the-rich income tax would do to Washington we need only examine how states with the highest income-tax rates perform relative to their zero-income tax counterparts.
Comparing the 9 states with the highest tax rates on earned income to the nine states with no income tax shows how high tax rates weaken economic performance.
- In the past decade the nine states with the highest personal income tax rates have seen gross state product increase by 59.8 percent personal income grow by 51 percent and population increase by 6.1 percent.
- The nine states with no personal income tax have seen gross state product increase by 86.3 percent personal income grow by 64.1 percent and
population increase by 15.5 percent.
Over the past 50 years 11 states have introduced state income taxes exactly as Washington is proposing -- and the consequences have been devastating says Laffer.
- Each and every state that introduced an income tax saw its share of total U.S. output decline.
- Some of the states like Michigan Pennsylvania and Ohio have become fiscal basket cases.
- Even West Virginia which was poor to begin with got relatively poorer after adopting a state income tax.
- Over the past decade the nine states with the highest tax rates have experienced tax revenue growth of 74 percent -- a full 22 percent less than the states with no income tax.
Source: Arthur Laffer
The Bill Gates Income Tax Wall Street Journal October 5 2010.
