By John Kennedy – Confusion, disputed facts and legal entanglements may hobble the Legislature’s efforts to give Panhandle residents property tax breaks for losses stemming from the Gulf oil spill.

By John Koenig -Bill McCollum wants to cut state taxes on businesses. Rick Scott does, too. Both Republican gubernatorial candidates tout tax cuts as a way to attract more businesses to the state, create new jobs and revive the economy. Listening to them, you might think Florida is an expensive place in which to do business. But it’s not.

By Tom Zucco — Along with the tar globs, the toxic seawater, and the damage to the fishing and tourist industries, there’s another ill effect of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster that, until recently, has been lurking in the background: A drop in the value of thousands of homes along Florida’s coast.

If you think this was a tough budgetary year for Florida government, wait until 2011. With the federal stimulus money gone and several big bills coming due, legislators will face even tougher decisions.

“Someone goes into Best Buy, looks at a product, prices it, goes home and searches online and finds it for 6 percent less,” says Robert Weissert, TaxWatch’s general counsel. “The savvy consumer will purchase on the Internet and save the sales tax. That cheats the state of Florida.” How much longer can Florida allow itself to be cheated this way?

The Internet, in terms of commerce, is not really a place but a conduit. A typical transaction involves, say, a person from Miami visiting a coffeehouse in New York, buying a song on California-based Apple’s iTunes through servers routed through Texas and Illinois. Who gets what cut of which tax? And even if it could be accurately calculated, the whole enterprise would only discourage the kind of commerce that is barely keeping our shaky economy afloat.

It may be only fitting that newly independent Charlie Crist targets GOP legislators in his new outsider campaign, unleashing his veto power as governor over their conservative excesses. They cut Crist free, and the man they most revile in the state Capitol has new strength in his campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Low- and moderate-income families in Florida pay a far higher share of their income in state and local taxes than do the richest families in the state. In fact, according to the report by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), Florida families in the lowest income group pay more than six times more of their income in state and local taxes than do those in the top 1 percent, based on income and taxes paid in 2007.

Florida’s ruling Republican legislators have a love-hate relationship with Washington. Federal stimulus funding has spared the state from having to make deeper spending cuts or raise taxes and fees. Considering how Florida’s finances have been maintained by Washington’s handouts, are GOP complaints about federal spending hypocritical?

After more than a decade of experience, little evidence exists to show that privately operated prisons are less expensive or more effective in rehabilitating prisoners. The state’s experience with privatized prisons raises serious questions about whether the taxpayers are getting their money’s worth, according to a new report by the Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy.

Amid a legislative session marked by leaders touting transparency, the Florida Channel, the eyes and ears on Tallahassee for many Floridians, is on the chopping block again. “The demand for what we do is not shrinking,” Beth Switzer, the Florida Channel’s executive director, says. “But it’s getting harder to do what we do with less and less.”

Budgets are sliced, diced, compromised. The only common theme: money, usually more money. But it’s not the amount of money but the results that matter.

For Florida’s 114 specialty tags, the Legislature’s decision to sharply boost motorist fees is prompting drivers to steer clear of the plates.

By John KoenigEditor and Publisher
A conservative friend vented his tax frustrations on Facebook the other day.
“As long as you pay property taxes, the state, not you, owns your property,” my friend Richard wrote. “As long as you pay taxes on your wages, you are a serf, not a freeman or free woman.”
No doubt, Richard [...]

By Margot H. Knight
Say the word “ARTS” and people smile and FEEL.  We generally associate arts and culture with FEELING, not thinking.  We tend, as a culture, to minimize feelings and put a high price on rational thought and action.  But it’s time to think, and think seriously, about arts and culture, because arts and [...]