Topic: Budget & Tax

Learning from the crisis (2): Strengthening our reserve funds

By: David Blatt
December 10, 2009 // Updated: May 1, 2019
As state leaders struggle to find solutions to this year’s revenue shortfalls and funding gaps, it is not too soon to draw lessons from the current state fiscal crisis to design policies that will allow us to respond better the… Read more [More...]

Learning from the crisis (1): More frequent and better forecasting can help guide a path

By: David Blatt
December 8, 2009 // Updated: May 1, 2019
As state leaders struggle with how to manage the enormous budget shortfalls the state faces this year and next, the focus is understandably on decisions that must be made over the coming weeks and months.  But while short-term challenges are… Read more [More...]

The Rainy Day Fund debate: Not if, but when…and how much?

By: David Blatt
November 23, 2009 // Updated: May 1, 2019
If state fiscal conditions can be likened to the weather, it’s been apparent for many months that Oklahoma is in the midst of a toad strangler of a rain, to borrow the Tulsa World’s colorful characterization. Going into the current… Read more [More...]

Should the poor pay more?

By: David Blatt
November 18, 2009 // Updated: May 2, 2019
In Oklahoma, who pays the highest percentage of their income in taxes? Those with the lowest incomes do, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). The state’s sales, excise and property taxes, which fall disproportionately on the… Read more [More...]

New Who Pays? Report from ITEP

By: Oklahoma Policy Institute
November 17, 2009 // Updated: May 2, 2019
A new report  from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) reveals that low and moderate-income Oklahomans pay a greater percentage of their incomes in state and local taxes than those with higher incomes.  The full report is available … Read more [More...]

Crossing the Threshold: Families in poverty no longer paying state income tax

By: David Blatt
November 12, 2009 // Updated: May 2, 2019
An interesting new report from our friends at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities looks at whether families with income below the federal poverty level (FPL) in each state are subject to state income taxes. It finds that for… Read more [More...]

State revenues: The storm may be subsiding but the forecast remains bleak

By: David Blatt
November 11, 2009 // Updated: May 1, 2019
The latest monthly budget release (PDF) from Treasurer Scott Meacham provided some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that October revenues fell well short of projections, as they have in each month of the current fiscal… Read more [More...]

Stimulus reporting–more dead trees don’t help you see the forest

By: Paul Shinn
November 9, 2009 // Updated: May 2, 2019
There’s been a lot of news about stimulus reporting the last few weeks. A lot of it has focused on jobs created or saved; that’s understandable since that was a major point of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which… Read more [More...]

Tax cuts and consequences

By: David Blatt
November 5, 2009 // Updated: May 2, 2019
Plunging state tax collections are wreaking havoc on the state budget and having increasingly painful effects on public services in Oklahoma. Initial estimates were for tax collections for the current year, FY ‘10, to be more than $600 million below… Read more [More...]

Sunk: Mercury Marine fiasco casts light on costs of state subsidy wars

By: David Blatt
November 3, 2009 // Updated: May 2, 2019
Over the past several months, we have blogged several times on state tax incentives, in particular on the need to strengthen transparency and evaluation of tax credit programs (see our posts here,  here, here and here). The issue  seems to… Read more [More...]