TAXES

CPPP Executive Director Scott McCown, Senior Fiscal Analyst Dick Lavine, and Senior Budget Analyst Eva DeLuna Castro show how a balanced approach to balancing the state's budget will meet of the needs of Texas today and tomorrow.

CPPP Senior Fiscal Analyst Dick Lavine offered this invited testimony on long- and short-term revenue shortfalls to the House Select Committee on Fiscal Stability during their meeting on August 23, 2010.

CPPP Senior Fiscal Analyst Dick Lavine offered this invited testimony on the problems facing Texas' regressive, inadequate tax system to the Texas Senate Select Committee on Public School Finance Weights, Allotments, and Adjustments during their meeting in San Antonio on May 19.

As you listen to the audio below, download and follow along in the powerpoint presentation that Dick distributed to the committee members.

Senior Fiscal Analyst Dick Lavine testified before the Texas House Ways and Means Committee about the optional homestead exemption.

CPPP Senior Fiscal Analyst Dick Lavine appeared on this week's edition of Texas Matters, where he discussed the best ways for lawmakers to deal with Texas' projected $10-15 billion budget deficitâ€"and how we got here in the first place.

For the past two years, online booking companies such as Expedia and Priceline have sought federal legislation to sharply restrict the authority of state and local governments to apply their general sales and hotel occupancy taxes to hotel rooms booked by these companies. They are now attempting to add this provision as an amendment to upcoming federal job-creation bills.

Such legislation could effectively prohibit taxation of the entire retail charge for hotel rooms that online companies book. This could permanently reduce Texas state and local revenue by some $65 million per year, at a time when the national recession is forcing reductions in public services needed by families struggling to stay afloat.

Our federal lawmakers shouldn't let online booking companies shortchange state and local governments by dodging part of their tax burden!

Today the Governor proposed two constitutional amendments, a California-style budget and tax restriction based on minority rule and a Colorado-style spending restriction based on an arbitrary formula unrelated to what Texas needs or can afford. Texans are best protected by a representative democracy based on majority rule without arbitrary restrictions. Texas faces many challenges but spending too much is not the problem. Texas ranks near the bottom in state spending. The Texas problem is that low- and moderate-income families pay too much in taxes while the top pays too little. Minority rule and arbitrary spending limits are designed to protect the top, not to protect Texas.