4 ms·
All true. Texas worker environment is not great though. Folks typically list income tax as an advantage but property and sales taxes more than make up the diffe
by tomrod 1y ago
All true. Texas worker environment is not great though. Folks typically list income tax as an advantage but property and sales taxes more than make up the difference. Also, govt admin is fairly hostile to any infrastructure expansion, preferring to let the local car dealers buy new town charters with no infrastructure.
Environmental regs are not well managed generally.
Anyhow, not the worst state, not the best. Pretty balanced economy, like Ohio, Illinois, California, and Georgia.
- ohples 1y ago> preferring to let the local car dealers buy new town charters with no infrastructure. I'm curious what this is referring to.
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoProbably talking about Starbase (elon musk).
- ohples 1y agoAhh don't know why I missed that one.
- tomrod 1y agoLocal state legislature has several car dealership owners that also started their own chartered towns. Wasn't thinking about starbase but that qualifies.
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoDid you have an example you wanted to share?
- hobobaggins 1y ago.. and why it's even a problem.
- tomrod 1y ago"Good ole boy network" is real!
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoTexas wouldn't be texas without it
- tomrod 1y agoIt could be so much more without it!
- reducesuffering 1y ago> Folks typically list income tax as an advantage but property and sales taxes more than make up the difference. No, not really. Texas is still below average state taxes and you can see the breakdown of each state here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_income_tax#/media/File:State_Tax_Burdens_2022.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_income_tax#/media/File:S...
- tomrod 1y agoYep, exactly what I mentioned, more than makes up for it especially once you factor in the higher Case Schiller on recent years causing increases to property taxes since 2022 (date of your image).
- larsiusprime 1y agoHigher property taxes and low income taxes is preferable actually, it keeps the housing market from getting massively distorted.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- munk-a 1y agoIdeally you're correct - but it does have the very large side effect of making real estate fraud much more lucrative. This isn't to say that the potential of people breaking a law means we shouldn't have the law at all - but higher property taxes necessitate a much large spend into property value auditors and require a lot more stringency around property improvement permitting to ensure that increases in property value are captured and recorded accurately.
- calmoo 1y agoHow much fraud we talking? I like to think along Matt Levine's ideas that at least some amount of fraud is acceptable - there will always be some amount of it and under or over-regulation creates a net-negative.
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoTough to measure. A couple data points: -NY state estimate $150–200M per year lost to real estate transfer tax fraud and evasion. On $3B receipts that is 5-6% breakage. -Harris County (Houston) found $21M in improper homestead exemptions. On ~$7B receipts that is ~0.3% breakage -Miami-Dade found $35M on $6.5B for improper homestead exemptions, 0.5% breakage For comparison, IRS net tax gap is about 12%
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- PopAlongKid 1y ago
- hobobaggins 1y agoYou can always move somewhere else. It's a big country with different state laws for every type of preference.
- tomrod 1y agoWhat a strange thing to say - - "sucks to be you if you don't like it, just leave" is not really how I'd expect people to have a conversation around identified policy gaps, especially among people that aren't there.