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It appears that the author is upset that his post-liquidity tax planning has been up-ended by prop 30. His argument only applies to entrepreneurs who have had

by tarr11 14y ago

It appears that the author is upset that his post-liquidity tax planning has been up-ended by prop 30. His argument only applies to entrepreneurs who have had an exit in 2012, and little to no income before that. This is a pretty narrow group. As an entrepreneur who moved back to California recently - the poor school systems of California were more of a deterrent to living here to me, rather than tax burden. Prop 30 addresses that. The referring article by Ethan Anderson [1] tries to extend this group of entrepreneurs to early employees of Facebook for example. However, most early employees do get paychecks and didn't have to "sacrifice" any more than employees at non-pre-IPO companies. [1] http://allthingsd.com/20121204/what-proposition-30-means-for-californias-entrepreneurs/ http://allthingsd.com/20121204/what-proposition-30-means-for...

jacoblyles 14y ago
Prop 30 doesn't address the bad schools in California. We have a big union problem: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-23/new-california-taxes-pay-for-pensions-not-schools.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-23/new-california-taxe... High taxes, big deficits, and bad public services - California state government achieves the trifecta of suck.
- xxpor 14y ago
  You don't have a union problem, you have a direct democracy problem.
  - jacoblyles 14y ago
    None of the big unsustainable pension increases involved ballot measures, as far as I know. The unions are the biggest spenders in California election and incumbency is rampant even when the state is going down the tubes.
    - xxpor 14y ago
      Then tell your local officials to grow a backbone. If incumbency is rampant, that's a structural problem with your redistricting process, not the unions. If BigCo Inc is allowed to spend a ton of money in elections, why can't the unions?
- tarr11 14y ago
  Prop 30 did address bad schools by avoiding "trigger cuts" of 6 billion dollars in 2012-13 [1] $5.4 billion to K–14 education and $500 million to public universities. http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/30/analysis.htm http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/30/analysis.htm
chernevik 14y ago
"This is a pretty narrow group." Depends on your definitions. "entrepreneurs who have had an exit in 2012, and little to no income before that" -- Pretty narrow. "People expecting fair treatment from their fellow citizens" -- Not narrow at all. Retroactive law of any kind sucks. As the point of law is to provide rules to guide conduct, "retroactive law" is something of a semantic nullity -- it cannot possibly guide behavior because its guidance is not knowable as people behave. It is little more than than infliction of a legislature on some population, under the color but not the substance of law. Your freedom and property depend on our general refusal to apply such law to you, no matter how much we may want to. Absent that general refusal, you depend on your absence from sets any set of people from which we might want to apply such law. If you are confident that you will be the same as everyone else on all important dimensions, you should be safe without that general refusal. If you've any ambition to be different in any important way, maybe you should consider your interests more broadly.
- mturmon 14y ago
  This is tinkering with marginal tax rates, not retroactively making peeing while standing up a felony. More seriously, there is a distinction between civil and criminal ex post facto laws (civil, including taxes: generally OK if there is a rational basis; criminal: essentially never due to Article 1 of the US Constitution). For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_States
  - chernevik 14y ago
    "The power to tax involves the power to destroy." John Marshall, McCulloch vs Maryland
- WaltFrench 14y ago
  “Retroactive law of any kind sucks.” Pretty sure that if our Washington politicos can't reach a deal by 12/31, whatever tax law IS set in 2013 will apply to the entire calendar year. As that will likely mean a significant tax decrease from the current law (under which the “temporary” Bush tax cuts expire), you won't find many people sympathizing with your complaint. Now if you want some sympathy, go with the fact that our state legislature refused to fund essential services, services that the populace wants and needs, due to a minority that blocked balanced budgets again and again. Which led to (a) Prop 30, and (b) the electorate cutting the Republican nihilists off at the knees. Now that we have a respite, let's get the amendment process going so that we no longer need the 2/3 vote in the legislature to pay for what a clear majority of citizens want. And if the people whose incomes have benefitted the most from doing business here would rather set up their entrepreneurial shops in Mississippi or some state that has lower educational commitments (but low taxes!), they just proved that they weren't smart enough to have actually earned that high income, anyway, and just got lucky. Let 'em go. Better yet, encourage them to move to Texas and secede so that they won't have to worry about all the immigrants here, too.

by tarr11 14y ago

jacoblyles 14y ago

Prop 30 doesn't address the bad schools in California. We have a big union problem: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-23/new-california-taxes-pay-for-pensions-not-schools.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-23/new-california-taxe... High taxes, big deficits, and bad public services - California state government achieves the trifecta of suck.

xxpor 14y ago
You don't have a union problem, you have a direct democracy problem.
- jacoblyles 14y ago
  None of the big unsustainable pension increases involved ballot measures, as far as I know. The unions are the biggest spenders in California election and incumbency is rampant even when the state is going down the tubes.
  - xxpor 14y ago
    Then tell your local officials to grow a backbone. If incumbency is rampant, that's a structural problem with your redistricting process, not the unions. If BigCo Inc is allowed to spend a ton of money in elections, why can't the unions?
tarr11 14y ago
Prop 30 did address bad schools by avoiding "trigger cuts" of 6 billion dollars in 2012-13 [1] $5.4 billion to K–14 education and $500 million to public universities. http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/30/analysis.htm http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/30/analysis.htm

chernevik 14y ago

"This is a pretty narrow group." Depends on your definitions. "entrepreneurs who have had an exit in 2012, and little to no income before that" -- Pretty narrow. "People expecting fair treatment from their fellow citizens" -- Not narrow at all. Retroactive law of any kind sucks. As the point of law is to provide rules to guide conduct, "retroactive law" is something of a semantic nullity -- it cannot possibly guide behavior because its guidance is not knowable as people behave. It is little more than than infliction of a legislature on some population, under the color but not the substance of law. Your freedom and property depend on our general refusal to apply such law to you, no matter how much we may want to. Absent that general refusal, you depend on your absence from sets any set of people from which we might want to apply such law. If you are confident that you will be the same as everyone else on all important dimensions, you should be safe without that general refusal. If you've any ambition to be different in any important way, maybe you should consider your interests more broadly.

mturmon 14y ago
This is tinkering with marginal tax rates, not retroactively making peeing while standing up a felony. More seriously, there is a distinction between civil and criminal ex post facto laws (civil, including taxes: generally OK if there is a rational basis; criminal: essentially never due to Article 1 of the US Constitution). For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law#United_States
- chernevik 14y ago
  "The power to tax involves the power to destroy." John Marshall, McCulloch vs Maryland
WaltFrench 14y ago
“Retroactive law of any kind sucks.” Pretty sure that if our Washington politicos can't reach a deal by 12/31, whatever tax law IS set in 2013 will apply to the entire calendar year. As that will likely mean a significant tax decrease from the current law (under which the “temporary” Bush tax cuts expire), you won't find many people sympathizing with your complaint. Now if you want some sympathy, go with the fact that our state legislature refused to fund essential services, services that the populace wants and needs, due to a minority that blocked balanced budgets again and again. Which led to (a) Prop 30, and (b) the electorate cutting the Republican nihilists off at the knees. Now that we have a respite, let's get the amendment process going so that we no longer need the 2/3 vote in the legislature to pay for what a clear majority of citizens want. And if the people whose incomes have benefitted the most from doing business here would rather set up their entrepreneurial shops in Mississippi or some state that has lower educational commitments (but low taxes!), they just proved that they weren't smart enough to have actually earned that high income, anyway, and just got lucky. Let 'em go. Better yet, encourage them to move to Texas and secede so that they won't have to worry about all the immigrants here, too.