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Comment by fortran77 | Hacker News Reader

As a commercial landlord, I've seen all sorts of assistance offered, but no local government I know of is offering property tax deferrals. I have a $60,000 property tax bill due, and tenants who can't pay their rent (I've discounted them 75% to help them out.)

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There's a distinction between assistance to renters vs assistance to landlords: assistance to renters prevents them from becoming homeless, whereas landlords are usually not at risk of becoming homeless.

Mass homelessness would be hellish for everyone. While we are all naturally focused on our individual situations it's good to not lose sight of the big picture.

IIRC, states and cities can’t really run up year-to-year deficits the way the federal government does. They can really only cut services, issue bonds, raise taxes, or use emergency funds to cover increased expenses. That’s why federal bailouts of states keeps coming up.

I’m budgeting for up to a 10% aggregate tax increase now, but I have no idea if that’s too high or low.

State governments are totally MIA here. There’s not even a hint they’ll defer state or local taxes, let alone forgive. In fact in some states they’re proposing the highest income tax hikes in their history.

Many states are facing insolvency, because expected revenue has declined by as much as 30% [1]. States have "rainy day funds" to cover unforeseen events, but most have between 5-10% of general fund expenditures set aside [2].

States cannot create new money and they cannot declare bankruptcy. Most states also have balanced budget requirements [3].

If you want government support, the federal government is the only entity uniformly capable of creating money and running deficits.

[1] https://www.ncsl.org/Portals/1/Documents/fiscal/Rev-Projecti...

[2] https://taxfoundation.org/2020-state-rainy-day-funds/

[3] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-state...

Many state governments aren't constitutionally allowed to borrow money or run a deficit. The people who supported these features are largely the ones who will be impacted by the results.

They can cut programs.

The first thing that should be cut are special tax agreements with large businesses, not supportive programs.

I completely understand a tax hike. But California is only proposing it on "millionaires". I say, lets raise everyone's taxes 1% to take care of this special situation. It seems immoral to vote to raise taxes on "someone else." We're all in this together.

The highest-earners pay a lower effective tax rate than the median earner.

Most humans agree that progressive taxation is moral and just, but today "raising taxes on the wealthy" merely means "raising taxes on the wealthy to match the average person".

That's simply not true, especially in California because of the elimination of SALT deductions. High salaried earners pay a disproportionate amount of taxes in the Unites States -- more than the percentage of money that they earn. While I'm sure there are a few wealthy people that have odd business arrangements that allow them to legally beat taxes, that's not the case for the overwhelming majority of people.

I just like fairness. I think they should raise taxes to pay for the COVID bailouts. But on EVERYONE. Not just on someone else. On me and on you. Because I'm not a spiteful jealous person.

https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...

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