Is California undertaxed?

Carol Platt Liebau:

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... Of all the problems contributing to the fiscal mess, state under-taxation is the least of them. California’s sales and gas taxes are the highest in the country – and it has the highest vehicle license fees and the second-highest top-bracket income tax, too. Its corporate tax rates are the highest of all western states, and for the fourth year in a row, a survey of 543 CEO’s found that California’s toxic combination of high taxes and intrusive regulations made it the worst place in the nation to do business.

In fact, at the real root of California’s fiscal misery is the profligacy of arrogant, big-spending, left-wing legislators, who have treated taxpayers as if they exist only to support the government....

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Remarkably, even as they have driven California into the fiscal ditch (and demanded ever-higher taxes from its citizens), Evans and her colleagues remain the most highly compensated state legislators in the nation. Along with their six-figure salaries, taxpayers supply them with cars, gasoline and auto maintenance. As regular Californians’ budgets are stretched to the limit, many of the “cuts” the state Senate is debating for itself are laughable. They include whether to reduce the benefit that provides their staffers with two new pairs of glasses yearly (or sunglasses, for those who don’t wear glasses). The change would limit workers to one new pair – of course, courtesy of the taxpayers.

Ultimately, any honest assessment of California’s plight must assign responsibility for the state’s fiscal crisis – not to the taxpayers who voted for Prop. 13 three decades ago – but to the politicians who have subsequently exploited them without mercy. Indeed, if spending had simply reflected average population growth plus the average increase in the cost of living since 1991, there would now be a $15 billion surplus. After adjusting for inflation, the state now spends nearly 20% more per capita than it did 18 years ago; even as California’s tax revenues increased by 167% during that period, state spending exploded by 189%.

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Liberalism has been tried in California and found wanting--ever higher taxes. These high tax rates are driving businesses out of California to low tax states like Texas. It is one of the most heavily taxed states in the union, yet liberals keep saying they are not taxed enough. It is time to admit that liberalism does not work.