Browsing: Taxes

Badger Institute Public Affairs Associate David Fladeboe submitted written testimony in favor of 2021 AB 149 before the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Constitution and Ethics on March 10, 2021.

2021 AB 149 would increase the Legislature’s role in approving the expenditure of federal funds related to COVID-19.

Nearly 90,000 Wisconsin small businesses that have taken out loans under the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) will face hundreds of millions of dollars in state income tax liability on those loans this spring, despite the loans being tax-free at the federal level.

The policy decisions state policymakers make in the months ahead will have far-reaching implications for how quickly jobs and wages are restored in Wisconsin.

Climate change has been blamed over the years for the rise … and fall … and rise again of lake levels

Preferential contracts undermine the truly disadvantaged, and programs are prone to fraud

Highway funding, which relies on the gas tax, will be hard hit as fuel sales decline

Wisconsin would be worse off had responsible budgeting not produced healthy surplus, rainy day fund
By David Fladeboe
April 6, 2020

The Legislature should not delegate taxing responsibility and authority to an industry association

Wisconsin’s prison system will require hundreds of millions of dollars for new construction, operating costs just to keep up with population growth

The Democratic Party’s track record and the event’s unknown price tag suggest taxpayers may be on the hook for Milwaukee’s July convention

The bulk of the wealth of the very rich is in business assets, which benefit the economy

Milwaukee’s first socialist mayor blamed his 1912 re-election loss on his call to tax the assets of the rich

Even failed and troubled ones like the Job Corps training centers are nearly impossible to shut down

Over 180 credit unions and banks across Wisconsin already offer student loan refinancing products and/or student loans.

The federal government has the right approach by revising existing rules rather than starting unnecessary new programs

State government needn’t have a hand in retirement-savings fix; private-sector options already proliferate

Rich people shouldn’t be the beneficiaries’ of a federal program that gives investors tax breaks to help disadvantaged areas, critics say

Last month, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue released data showing the state’s general fund tax collections for fiscal year (FY) 2019 were up nearly $1.2 billion, or 7.4 percent, from FY 2018, and nearly $703 million higher than anticipated when the state’s FY 2018-19 budget was adopted.

The Hop, a $128 million streetcar that travels a 2.1-mile loop in downtown Milwaukee, is a classic boondoggle made possible by federal grants (i.e., taxpayer money). Meanwhile, the Joseph Project, a Milwaukee transportation enterprise that rejects government funding, is helping central city residents secure good-paying manufacturing jobs in neighboring counties. With a small fleet of church vans (most of them donated), the Joseph Project creates taxpayers instead of fleecing them.

Video shows how The Hop fleeces taxpayers while the Joseph Project creates them.