And Single Tax Rates For All
Dave Brockington at Lawyers, Guns and Money has an oldie but goodie complaint that you hear from anyone who thinks about tax and budget policies in a serious manner — that taxpayer funded stadiums are giant scams. Specifically, Jerry Jones has claimed that the new Cowboy stadium, which the city of Arlington contributed $325 million of the total $1.12 billion cost, will “be its own stimulus package that will help “the country and this world” dig out of the recession.”
And while the explicit subsidies cities give teams and their corporate sponsors for the construction of new stadiums is quite egregious, the far more common subsidy is exempting business or stadiums from paying taxes. Brockington points out that cities and states routininely exempt business from paying taxes in an effort to lure them into their jurisdiction. Everrett, Washington, for example, ‘”afforded Boeing large subsidies” to assemble the 787 there.
Now, of course, this is a very thorny problem because of its collective nature. While everyone would be better off if cities didn’t compete by slashing taxes (and thus their revenues) to attract businesses, it will generally be rational for a single city or county or state to do so. The real solution would be a total federalization of the tax code, which could only real happen if we had a federalization of budget and policy making, which for a variety of reasons, isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
