A simple idea.

Let's lower the standard top individual tax rate to 28% and eliminate the corporate tax rate altogether to increase investment incentives, reward hard work, and stimulate the economy.

Then let's create a special 75% bracket for personal (over $250k per year) or corporate income from any business that receives any significant direct subsidies from any federal, state or local government entity or program. You need government help to build a stadium? Fine, give us 75% of the profit. You got a $200M contract because your employer's stadium was locally funded, freeing up their cash flow to pay employees ridiculous amounts? Fine, give us 75% for making that happen. You want billions in taxpayer money to gamble on your solar or electric technologies? Great, if it succeeds, send us our check for 75%.

I'm not sure if my tax system will raise more or less total revenues, but I'm pretty damn sure that government spending suddenly drops significantly as corporate welfare leeches stampede to suddenly embrace the free market and "capitalism" again, and the spending that's left will driven more by well reasoned policies and less by well heeled special interest groups.

Your telephone bill most likely includes a 3% federal excise tax, which was originally introduced as a temporary luxury tax on all telecommunications service in order to fund a special project. That project: the Spanish-American War.

Good piece. Not enough of this kind of coverage these days. Is Murphy a sports guy or a news columnist? This seems beyond most local sports hacks.

I'd like to start a cable news channel that does nothing bu report on government expenditure and budgeting. I'm a lefty and all, but I think we'd all be better served by knowing where and why the money goes. I would make sure to have loud and garish computer graphics and really hot female anchors so people might actually watch it, too.

I'd like to start a cable news channel that does nothing bu report on government expenditure and budgeting. I'm a lefty and all, but I think we'd all be better served by knowing where and why the money goes. I would make sure to have loud and garish computer graphics and really hot female anchors so people might actually watch it, too.

What a terrible idea. What if I'm watching your stupid channel, and I miss hearing about something that a Romney spokesman says about an Obama ad that repeated something that Romney said about Obama?

What a terrible idea. What if I'm watching your stupid channel, and I miss hearing about something that a Romney spokesman says about an Obama ad that repeated something that Romney said about Obama?

Hmm. See, I never think things through! This has always been one of my many, many problems.

So it has become like countless other "temporary" taxes and fees?

ValueArbitrageur,
In addition to your equity stake tax, you could write a restriction in public funds and grants contracts restricting those whom donate to political campaigns. As it focuses on federal spending, it might circumvent Citizens United. Do that and you will have solved the problem of corporate, non-profit and union manipulation of the public coffers.

The problem with VA's suicide taxes is that the government has tried to do type of things before and they simply don't work. For instance the government reworked the bond procedures in the hopes that states and municipalities wouldn't issue bonds for stadiums and such. They set them up as losing propositions for local government to issue them and yet they went right ahead and issued them anyway. Politicians get elected and stay elected by getting people "stuff".

wasn't the chicago area toll system set up to pay off a bond that originated in 1954, got paid off in 1995 or so and this whole system was so lucrative they kept it going?

Your telephone bill most likely includes a 3% federal excise tax, which was originally introduced as a temporary luxury tax on all telecommunications service in order to fund a special project. That project: the Spanish-American War.

At least we won.

I'd like to start a cable news channel that does nothing bu report on government expenditure and budgeting. I'm a lefty and all, but I think we'd all be better served by knowing where and why the money goes. I would make sure to have loud and garish computer graphics and really hot female anchors so people might actually watch it, too.

There have been some that have proposed that everyone that files taxes receives a "receipt" that lays out in basic form where your money goes. Like 33% social security, 30% medicare/medicaid, 20% defense, etc. (I have no idea if those are accurate, but I suspect they are close).

They already do this in the city I live in, although its not a receipt, its in the public newsletter.

There have been some that have proposed that everyone that files taxes receives a "receipt" that lays out in basic form where your money goes.

Obama started that on the White House web page: http://www.whitehouse.gov/2011-taxreceipt

I'd like to start a cable news channel that does nothing bu report on government expenditure and budgeting. I'm a lefty and all, but I think we'd all be better served by knowing where and why the money goes. I would make sure to have loud and garish computer graphics and really hot female anchors so people might actually watch it, too.

So what you're saying is that you want to start the revolution? /ducks

Is Murphy a sports guy or a news columnist?

He's a news columnist/reporter who finds smaller and smaller homes: the daily newspaper, then the glossy local monthly magazine, now a urbanism website. I don't get the impression that he has much of a bias, either.

Although I believe the District owns Miller Park, so it makes sense that the District would pay for some capital improvements. It may be that people thought the government was raising money simply to build the stadium, not act like a commerical landlord who makes improvements.

This is an amazing graphicon the Federal Budget. Each of those little tiny squares is, more or less, an Agency. I work for one with like an $800 million budget. And I can't find us on there unless I zoom in twice.

wasn't the chicago area toll system set up to pay off a bond that originated in 1954, got paid off in 1995 or so and this whole system was so lucrative they kept it going?

As far as I've been able to determine, the Illinois toil authority exists to provide generous salaries for employees of the Illinois toll authority.

Then let's create a special 75% bracket for personal (over $250k per year) or corporate income from any business that receives any significant direct subsidies from any federal, state or local government entity or program. You need government help to build a stadium? Fine, give us 75% of the profit. You got a $200M contract because your employer's stadium was locally funded, freeing up their cash flow to pay employees ridiculous amounts? Fine, give us 75% for making that happen. You want billions in taxpayer money to gamble on your solar or electric technologies? Great, if it succeeds, send us our check for 75%.

Interesting idea - but where do you draw the line between legitimate government contracts with private companies and subsidies? I think it's not a bad idea to say that the government should get a cut of the revenues from any patent that is derived from government funded research - but there might be some lines of thinking that non-commerical research grants represent subsidies to universities, or that all defense contractors or NASA contractors are subsidy recipients, since they receive so much of their income from the federal government. The universities that receive substantial government grants are all non-profit, but e.g. most med school professors make more than $250K, and given the qualifications they have, it would be nearly impossible to replace them for less. Are they susceptible to your 75% taxes? Or the for-profit colleges - they essentially are subsidized by student loans that never get repaid, and they do make big profits. I like the idea, but I think the implementation would lead to some arbitrary value judgments.

The 2012 Super Bowl played at the publicly financed $720 million Lucas Oil Stadium “has prompted local officials to raise restaurant, hotel, and rental car taxes, and make other payments on top of about $43 million in unexpected financing costs to their sports and convention facilities.”

Your telephone bill most likely includes a 3% federal excise tax, which was originally introduced as a temporary luxury tax on all telecommunications service in order to fund a special project. That project: the Spanish-American War.

Only if you have a "local-only" phone service. The IRS stopped collecting the tax for everyone else in 2006.

wasn't the chicago area toll system set up to pay off a bond that originated in 1954, got paid off in 1995 or so and this whole system was so lucrative they kept it going?

Dunno, but I do like this trivia about the Skyway (it's from Wiki, but it's at least cited):

The Skyway's official name, referring to it as a "toll bridge" rather than a "toll road", is the result of a legal quirk. At the time of its construction, the city charter of Chicago did not provide the authority to construct a toll road. However, the city could build toll bridges, and it was found that there was no limit to the length of the approaches to the bridge. Therefore, the Skyway is technically a toll bridge with a six-mile-long approach. This also is part of the reason that there are no exits available until after one has crossed the bridge and paid the toll.

I'd like to start a cable news channel that does nothing bu report on government expenditure and budgeting. I'm a lefty and all, but I think we'd all be better served by knowing where and why the money goes. I would make sure to have loud and garish computer graphics and really hot female anchors so people might actually watch it, too.

I would support that, maybe not tv, but a massive web blog with good accurate links. I'm lefty also but there is a difference between spending tax money on useful crap, and exploiting the system or just outright wasting money.

The Skyway's official name, referring to it as a "toll bridge" rather than a "toll road", is the result of a legal quirk. At the time of its construction, the city charter of Chicago did not provide the authority to construct a toll road. However, the city could build toll bridges, and it was found that there was no limit to the length of the approaches to the bridge. Therefore, the Skyway is technically a toll bridge with a six-mile-long approach. This also is part of the reason that there are no exits available until after one has crossed the bridge and paid the toll.

Man I hate lawyers.