Jim Capo's Proposal
Bloggin' candidate for the NC Senate Jim Capo posts his proposal for waiving state taxes on public school employees (he needs to link to it from the main page of his weblog) (here is a shorter version of the proposal). Capo's idea is interesting, but his presentation is far too dense--he needs a very simple summary at the top, leaving out references to other bad bills etc. and getting right to the mechanics of his proposal.
I have a couple of questions about his idea as worded: he says it saves $70 million per year in state taxes that go to Washington--but doesn't it save the money for individual NC taxpayers, not the state? Also, is the $70 million in savings to NC in the form of lower wages a net number after the reduction in tax revenue caused by the waiver, or a gross number before factoring in that reduced tax revenue? If gross, what is the net?
The last thing I think he needs to address is the reduction in retirement pay caused by his plan. It's not enough to blithely state that the trust fund is fictional, people still count on it--maybe there could be some mechanism to help teachers invest that extra take-home pay at low cost to make up for the reduction.
It's an interesting idea, this tax waiver, and fits well with Capo's general plans to make NC a competitve state in terms of tax rates. And unlike a lot of the inside-baseball stuff that Libertarians throw around, it could have some visceral appeal to voters. First, though, it needs to be firmed up, rigorously fact-checked, and simply presented.
UPDATE: per the comments below, Jim has made a few changes to his wording, and the links should all work now.
9:08:48 AM 
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