Good points. And at the end of the day, just the perception of no state income tax appeals to your average walking around nimrod human who won’t look much further into it.
So, no more state income tax
- Thread starter The Cooterpoot
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Good luck to the politician who votes to cut Social Security. Old people vote.
It’s a mess. I have parents dependent on it and that responsibility would fall to me. Hearing the numbers in that podcast and how they break out, it looks like there will be intentional pain near-mid term or big pain later. We’ve got a mess. Crazy to me that most of our debt issues we took on immediately following a balanced budget. It’s like our congress got a credit line extension and immediately blew that money and applied for more credit cards. We are about 25 years into that cycle…
I admire your optimism, but it says a lot about MS, that those two areas share more allegiance with other states. Plus hurricanes, tornadoes, other bigger cities across state borders. Sometimes I think we are just 17ed.
I know this sounds morbid, but if we can make it about 20 years, all the boomers will have passed on and that will be a big relief on the system. Like you, I selfishly do not want my parents to die but that generation really has sucked the system dry. And they didn't have the same number of kids in order to keep the pyramid going.
And at the same time they don't want any immigrants to fill that gap.
I am not particularly optimistic about Mississippi's economic future; I left a long time ago for the reasons most people have and would love to have had a compelling reason to move back.
But, I do some work in the state and think that those areas are the most immediately viable. I think that NE MS being close to other urban centers is a positive; one good way to jump start urban development is to be close enough to another metro to attract some flight from those areas. Hurricanes and climate issues (insurability, for climate deniers) are real problems for the coast.
Do you personally know a "boomer" who's against legal immigration ?
Same thing could help everything. Term limits. Give everyone one 8 year term. I bet we would see better decisions.
They won’t put it in those terms but they cheered when DeSantis put a bunch of asylum seekers (I.e. people trying to come here legally) on a bus and they are cheering the deportation of people here legally now.
Our current president. I could post up countless full context comments from the last 8 months that clearly show he does not support legal immigration.
This is a warped perspective.
It's unfortunate you choose to frame necessary community financial support like this.
Without social amenities that come from your property tax payments, your property would be worth nothing close to what it is.
I don't think anybody really thinks eliminating income tax is going to magically create a Houston or Nashville in Mississippi. I think people pushing the elimination of the income tax just believe we can't continue to fall further behind with bad policy.
If we could magically have a functioning, desirable population center, or eliminate the income tax, I think most anybody would agree that over any reasonable time frame, a desirable population center would be a bigger boon for the state than no income tax. But only one of those things is reasonably within our control, so that's what they push on. Clearly there would be interest in making Jackson more desirable, but when you see the pushback the original CID proposal got, it's hard to envision a path to make Jackson desirable when so many voters in Jackson don't want it (or at least are willing to keep voting for people that prevent it, both judges and city officials). seems pretty clear .
Fair enough.
And I just read your post again. It says 'personally know' and I thankfully don't personally know Trump.
I do not personally know any boomers who are flat out against legal immigration.
I try to not associate with crazies in real life.
Insurance is not more expensive in Mississippi because of climate issues. Mississippi has a few issues with insurance. One is that it was very fortunate and avoided major storms with big storm surges for several decades, but during that 35 years, it did a lot of development in lower lying areas, because people understandably built on the higher ground first. When it finally got another big storm surge after 35 years of development, it was brutal. And because a lot of that development was on slabs, there wasn't an easy or economic way to mitigate it. Those tail risks are so far out there that we don't have a good way to measure how often they "should" happen, so people that don't understand risk or that are dishonest like to attribute them to climate change.
Another issue is that because of all the fraud with companies telling people they will get their insurer to replace their roofs, whether it's from storm damage or not, has driven up costs. Lots of insurers are basically just moving the deductible to the cost of a new roof to avoid that issue. That's actually probably a reasonable fix, but it's a big chunk to self insure.
A third issue is that code changes drives up costs of rebuilding much more than it creates in savings from avoided damage. Your house may cost 20% more to build, but it's not going to save that much money. It just makes the total amount to rebuild and the cost to repair more.
I travel to other areas of the country and come back here and just wish that Mississippi would be so much better than it is. Even Alabama is much more modern than us.
You misunderstand me. I realize that money is necessary for local govts. I just don't like it being tied to your home. Tax something else instead. Add it to sales tax so that everybody who uses those city services contributes to it and not just homeowners. It would also spread the tax burden out making each person owe less. If we're honest, property taxes punish home ownership and encourages people to rent.
I've recently taken a deposition of a regional insurance adjuster/manager from a major carrier and had them testify directly that the company has overhauled its risk model on both sales and claims side to account for the dramatic (his word, not mine) increase in property losses across the nation. The claim at issue was a major wind/hail event in Colorado, but he added flood events across the nation as a contributing factor to this choice. He testified that his understanding was that his carrier was spreading cost of risk across the US to all markets as a result.
Also acknowledged that the practice of reforming of policies to modify roof values from RCV to ACV was due to increase in number of claims. Because this claim involved allegations of misconduct (insurers almost always allege general misconduct by property owner in these cases but not fraud because they have to plead that specifically and they usually can't), I had to pin him down about that, and he eventually admitted that incidences of fraud were generally on trend with the rate of claims over the last 20 years.
You disagree with this?
This seems to assume that property tax is the only form of taxation available. Can someone not be in favor of paying for government services with taxes and other government revenue AND be opposed to a specific tax?
None of that is inconsistent with what I said. But, relatively few people carry private flood insurance. So I am skeptical that increased flood events are factoring into insurance companies rates in Mississippi for companies not underwriting flood policies. The NFIP risk rating 2.0 or whatever they call it is screwing some property owners that are not flood prone, but it's to help subsidize those properties that are.
Reinsurance rates have gone up significantly, which does impact markets that don't have extreme events and companies do update their risk models based on information not specifically tied to a particular area, so that can impact them. But those models also take actual losses into account, not just the severity of whatever event, and development patterns have a huge impact on losses, both because of the number of structures increasing and the associated values, and because lots of that development may take place in areas more prone to losses.
But probably most importantly, assuming this is why you posted that, major loss events are noisy and you can't just attribute an uptick to climate change any more than you can attribute a downtick to climate change. The markets always fluctuate based on recent claims history and stock market returns also have an impact. When the market is getting softer and rates come down, that's not climate change just because part of the cause of the soft market is fewer extreme events and it's not climate change when there are more extreme events.
Finally, I would have to check to confirm, but I don't think the cost of people getting full replacements or settlements for old roofs with questionable connection to wind or hail damage from a particular incident are classified as fraud losses on the insurance companies books or by the industry in general. I think they just get lumped into claims cost.
Property tax is stable. It's consistent.
You need stabile and consistent tax revenue for the things property taxes fund.
Sales tax isn't as stable or consistent. Border towns/counties with high sales tax lose revenue.
After 4 times thru, this question stills seems like a double negative, but I think I understand what you are asking.
Yes, the things that property tax pays for could be paid for with other taxes.
No, it wouldn't be as consistent a revenue stream for many towns/counties.
Yes, the inconsistency would make it more difficult to plan/forecast.
You'd have to have a 25 or 35 % sales tax to cover all of the local services that your property taxes provide. And what about the counties with little retail sales?
I hate the Hybrid and Electric car tax they tack onto your annual registration. I pay $88 a year for a Hybrid Rav4 on my annual registration. I think the Electric car tax is close to $200 per year. I'd like to know who voted for that and who didn't. I put about 12,000 miles a year on my Rav4. So I save about $100 on annual gas, then the state comes along and hits me up for the $88. Just when I thought I could help my budget, MS pulls the rug out from under me. I'm thinking of going back to a straight gas car.
So, not a "warped perspective," just an opinion on a particular tax that differs from yours.
I think it's important to recognize that someone can acknowledge the need for public funding and still question whether the current method of collecting that funding is the most equitable or sustainable long-term.
Yes, property tax is stable, but stability alone doesn’t make a tax structure inherently fair. For many people, tying taxes to something they’ve already paid off—like a home—feels like a burden, especially if their income is fixed or unpredictable. It also creates a dynamic where people can technically "own" property but still risk losing it due to taxation, which understandably feels like a contradiction to some.
Maybe the real conversation is: how do we balance revenue stability with fairness, and is there a way to modernize our tax system so that the burden is shared more evenly without losing that crucial consistency?
What if we enact a "posting" tax on the number of letters a person types into the internet through their phone, tablet or computer? AI can be rigged to just pull that tax out of your bank account automatically at the end of the month.
I love the smell of taxes in the morning. It smells like...victory.
I've always thought the "road usage fees" on EV's were going to stiff and probably over the top in the end.
The 'warped perspective' comment was referring to the libertarian style of phrasing property taxes. It's a technically correct yet disingenuous perspective because it ignores basic realities(of which I mentioned a couple).
I do not view a disagreement on how to best collect taxes as 'warped' if it simply doesn't align with my opinion.
As for what is or isn't fair when it comes to taxation, it is only undair for taxes to be collected on land that is owned if the person takes the position that owned land shouldnt be taxed.
But since the person chose to enter into that form of taxation and property ownership, I can't bring myself to feel too bad for them. This is akin to someone who moves near an airport then complains about noise. The airport was already there(as was the taxation system).
I am open to a serious proposal from someone who doesn't want property taxes to exist. They would need to actually address the obvious(should be obvious) concerns with such a system and provide realistic solutions.
^ that hasn't happened. Instead it's just been 'I should unconditionally own the land I paid for!' and nothing more.
A hybrid rav4 gets like combined 10mpg more than an ICE rav4.
Thats 100 gallons saved over 12,000mi.
At $2.70 per gallon, you are saving $270 annually.
Maybe your numbers work out to be different.
If so, that further shows the slim financial benefit of a rav4 hybrid. The increased cost to purchase makes it tough to break even if you only save $100 per year in gas costs.
So how exactly do you propose to pay for road maintenance if you don’t think EVs and hybrids should be taxed?
And I fully understand that theoretically heavier vehicles are paying more tax due to more gas cost. But EVs and hybrids weigh the same and do the same damage to roads as small gas powered cars. So why should you get off lighter on taxes?
Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas are in an arms race to eliminate the income tax along with MS....we are also trying not to be left behind....there is a lot to question, and all of it is relative to the state you live in....but the failure to increase the sales tax is going to be the long term problem....Tennessee's average sales tax is 9.75% and 100% of it goes back to the state fund....Mississippi is 7%, and increasing the sales tax was a "non starter" for the Senate to pass the bill.....and I think it's only 80% of the 7% goes back to the state fund....this is what is going to trigger the problem in 2030.
The state thinks EV's and Hybrids rob them of taxes due to them using no gas or very little respectively. They should just keep or increase the gas tax at the pump a little to cover state highway maintenance. It's what they've always done. Why charge people extra who pay more for EVs and Hybrids so they can save money. Besides it costs the state more to manage the pollution that straight gas cars produce vs EVs and Hybrids.
You are saving on gas. But you still need to pay a tax to use the road. And obviously your tax is much less than the equivalent gas engine car. So I don’t really see the complaint here.