Senate Bill 553 Secretary of State fees. Who says taxes never decrease? SB 553 would decrease article of incorporation fees and application for certificate of authority fees from $90 down to $75 if the application is filed by electronic means.
[tags]SB553-2007[/tags]
That’s a fee, Doug. I’m not seeing the *taxes* going down.
I’ve always regarded government fees as a form of tax. Is there a formal distinction?
Doug,
I can’t speak for Mike Kole, but the distinction in his mind might have something to do with the phenomenon of progressive taxation (as we see with income taxes). While hard-core right-libertarians and Objectivists oppose all compulsions to pay money to the government, their philosophical principles often make progressive taxes more deeply offensive, because they “punish” people for being more “successful”.
A nice regressive fee that puts a signficant burden on those who are only scraping by while only being an irritant to the wealthy? Not so much.
Again, I can’t and don’t speak for Mr. Kole. :)
Doug, I guess there really isn’t that much distinction overall. I’ll agree that a fee is a tax overall in the sense that there is money going out of the till to the government.
That said, many users fees are distinct to me from say, income taxes, by their mechanics. That doesn’t apply here so much, so I’ll explain what I was reacting to.
If I buy gasoline, the tax attached to it is a user fee. If I don’t use the roads and don’t use gasoline, I am free of the tax. I like this kind of tax because it is directly applied to the service. I have a lot of say on whether or not I will pay this tax. If I object, I can walk more, ride my bike more, take public transportation, etc.
An income tax, whether progressive, flat, or regressive, is a general tax. It is taken and applied to services I may not use, or may even take deep offense to (Iraq comes to mind). If I object, too bad for me. My money is going into the meat grinder and will be fought over by politicians to be spent regardless of my thoughts on whether it is appropriate or not.
This is all irrespective of my relative wealth.
Back to the topic, there is little choice involved here. If you’re going to do business such that you need to incorporate, you have little choice but to pay the fee.
I probably should celebrate gains where I could take them more, but I’ve learned much from Senate Democrats. I admire Ted Kennedy in particular for being able to always stand one more step to the left on any issue where he just gained ground. He has had great success in recent years using this tactic to move domestic policy ever leftward, even when he doesn’t have a majority. I’m thinking in particular here of the prescription drug bill that represented the largest new entitlement program ever, and Kennedy characterized it as ‘cheap’. It worked. The program expanded before long. Played the Bush like a fiddle.
To briefly comment on motor fuels taxes, while they pay for consruction and maintanence of highways, they are still inefficient when dealing with congestion issues. Urban roads prone to congestion should have a congestion pricing mechanism, such as time of day dependent tolls and access fees. London, England, for example, imposes an access fee to the central city for vehicles during business hours. Paying for highways using fuel taxes only, in a perverse way, is a disincentive to the state to build highways to relieve congestion. After all, those cars (except the odd hybrid) sitting in traffic jams are still burning fuel and thus paying taxes. Charging for highways with tolls would be a stronger energy conservation move by encouraging people to spread out activities.
Regarding taxes generally, they should be easy and cheap to administer, hard to avoid and completely transparent. There are many interesting tax schemes which economists have proposed, such as progressive consumption taxes, which simply lose coherency in democracies as they move from theory to practice. Our income tax is a sublime example of lack of this, a tax which over its history (excluding perhaps the 1986 reform) has grown more and more complex. I would suggest a stamp act for transfers of shares and bonds and some legal documents, for example recordable deeds and commercial related civil complaints as a starter. I also like selected excise taxes. All in all I don’t like the reduction in fees /taxes (call it what you like)of Senate bill 553. It is the perfect place for the State to raise money, although Deleware probably already has this mechanism locked up as a major source of revenue.