The following post by Paul Shinn originally appeared on The Tulsa Initiative Blog. The Tulsa Initiative is a project of Community Action Project and its partners to undertake research, planning, and coordination of pilot programs to support the delivery of state-of-the-art services to low-income children and families in Tulsa.

As Oklahoma’s Early Childhood Advisory Council, Smart Start Oklahoma is charged with making recommendations to Governor Mary Fallin on actions we can take at the state level to better support young children. Interested members of the public will get their chance to review and comment on the recommendations at a forum on August 18 in Oklahoma City. This opportunity comes in the context of a day-long, free conference where participants will learn more about funding early childhood programs and the impact of those programs on children and the state’s economy.

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As the deadline for filing income tax approaches, we return to a favorite blog post from our friend Paul Shinn that we first ran in 2009. You may also enjoy this video tribute to the many things we can be thankful our tax dollars help support.

April 15. I’m not a fan of tax day. Who is? After several tortuous weeks of determining whether I have excess distributions from my 529 plan  and deciding how much I owe to the two states I lived in last year, I’m in line at the post office to send all these forms and too many checks to too many different governments. I’ve had it. Why can’t we make society work without taxes? I’m willing to try, I think, as I dose off…

In the morning, it slowly dawns on me that I’ve awakened in a tax-free America. So far, it’s great; I didn’t need to set the alarm! No real point in taking the kids to school, if it’s even open today. I’m not wealthy, so I can’t afford one of the schools that is open five days a week, requires the teachers to have a degree, uses textbooks, and has standards about what my kids should learn during the year. When little Heather asks about whether she can go to college, I just laugh. We can’t pay the tens of thousands of tuition for a private college. There’s no grant or loan programs and womens’ sports don’t make a profit, so there are no athletic scholarships awaiting her. Child care is risky too, since nobody determines if day care operators are qualified, safe, and not just in it to find victims for something. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this month, we released a brief that provided our projections for state revenue collections for Fiscal Years 2011 through 2014.  Last week, the State Board of Equalization certified its official preliminary revenue estimates for FY ’12, along with updated projections for FY ’11, which we discussed in this blog post. The Board’s forecasts are very closely aligned with ours.  For FY ’11, our middle forecast is for General Revenue collections of $4.969 billion, compared to $4.949 billion projected by the Board, a difference of $20 million, or a mere 0.4 percent. For FY ’12, we are forecasting GR of $5.121 billion, which is $19 million, or 0.4 percent, above the official estimate certified by the Board of Equalization.

We point this out for two reasons. First, to unabashedly toot the horn of our forecasting guru, Paul Shinn, for developing a methodology that so closely anticipates the numbers developed for the Board of Equalization (you can read the technical memorandum explaining his  methodology by clicking here). This is the second year of our forecasting project; last year, Paul’s middle forecast for FY ’10 GR came in within 3.5 percent of actual full-year collections. Read the rest of this entry »

This is one of our most widely read and popular blog posts. It was written by Paul Shinn and initially ran on our blog on April 15, 2009.

April 15. I’m not a fan of tax day. Who is? After several tortuous weeks of determining whether I have excess distributions from my 529 plan  and deciding how much I owe to the two states I lived in last year, I’m in line at the post office to send all these forms and too many checks to too many different governments. I’ve had it. Why can’t we make society work without taxes? I’m willing to try, I think, as I dose off…

In the morning, it slowly dawns on me that I’ve awakened in a tax-free America. So far, it’s great; I didn’t need to set the alarm! No real point in taking the kids to school, if it’s even open today. I’m not wealthy, so I can’t afford one of the schools that is open five days a week, requires the teachers to have a degree, uses textbooks, and has standards about what my kids should learn during the year. When little Heather asks about whether she can go to college, I just laugh. We can’t pay the tens of thousands of tuition for a private college. There’s no grant or loan programs and womens’ sports don’t make a profit, so there are no athletic scholarships awaiting her. Child care is risky too, since nobody determines if day care operators are qualified, safe, and not just in it to find victims for something. Read the rest of this entry »