The Franchise Tax Board reports these Bakersfield residents are among the top 250 delinquent taxpayers. All owe personal income tax; the dates shown are when tax liens were filed:
That's three hundred ninety two MILLION, seven hundred forty THOUSAND, nine hundred and fifty dollars. Now, why does the name "Board of Equalization" bother me?
California defict=$28 BILLION dollars. Collecting all those delinquent taxes won't make a drop in the bucket in state deficit control--tho I agree it should be collected and an even smaller impact on overall revenue available for spending. Are those just from the City of Bakersfiled?
Excuse my ignorance, but can anybody sum up why California is in such terrible debt? What is all the money being spent on, and why isn't there money being made?
Excuse my ignorance, but can anybody sum up why California is in such terrible debt? What is all the money being spent on, and why isn't there money being made?
I'm not an expert, and can only guess. Reasons for cost: Government workers. Retirement pay for those workers. Illegal immigration, and the costs to hospitals, and schools. Environmental measures, and the extra costs that it takes to reach the goals. An extra two years of Unemployment paid for Millions of people.
Reasons for not making money: Businesses closing because of many reasons, mainly because they were not making money. More foreclosures mean less in property tax. People are not traveling to California as much as in the past because of lower incomes, and the attitude of "hate" that is coming out of the State over the past few years.
I look forward to hearing the real reasons, with some logical reasons.
Brad
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08:34 PM
madcurl Member
Posts: 21401 From: In a Van down by the Kern River Registered: Jul 2003
Three Bakersfield men on list of top 250 tax delinquents
Monday was the deadline to file 2010 tax returns, but California is still waiting on billions of dollars in back taxes, with some tax liens dating as far back as 1996.
California does not receive an estimated $6.5 billion in taxes that it's owed annually. The state Franchise Tax Board published its annual list of the top 250 delinquent taxpayers in California last week, three of them from Bakersfield.
Since then, 30 debtors have resolved their cases. But the remaining 63 corporate and 157 personal income tax filers still owe more than $193.4 million. The men listed from Bakersfield hadn't paid their bills as of Tuesday afternoon, according to tax board officials.
At the top of the list of delinquents: Halsey Minor, founder of technology news site CNET, and his wife, Shannon. The couple, maintaining their No. 1 spot from last year's list, owe more than $14 million in personal income tax.
They aren't the only high-income Californians with outstanding taxes. In 2008, out of 611,318 taxpayers reporting incomes of $200,000 or more, 2,431 paid no California personal income tax. That's more than four times the number of households at that income level that paid no personal income tax a decade earlier -- 579, according to a recent California Budget Project analysis.
California has published the 250 largest unpaid state income tax delinquencies since 2007. The method appears to have a shaming effect: Taxpayers, after the Franchise Tax Board notified them of their listings ahead of publication earlier this year, handed the state more than $13 million to keep their names off the list. The state has collected more than $78 million to date in this manner.
"When taxpayers do not pay their fair share, it places an unfair burden on those who do," the Franchise Tax Board website says about the list. "Closing the tax gap is in the best interest of all Californians."
California faces a $26.6 billion deficit. The Department of Finance estimates that personal income and corporate tax receipts will provide 63.9 percent of general fund revenues this fiscal year, according to the California Budget Project. Thirty years ago, those taxes accounted for 50 percent of general fund revenues.
Since then, the cost of funding state services has shifted from corporations to personal income tax filers, the project found. Individual income tax comprised 35.4 percent of general fund revenues in 1980-81, compared to an estimated 51.5 percent this year.
Corporate taxes, which used to represent 14.6 percent of general fund revenue, will provide an estimated 12.4 percent this year. California will lose nearly $2 billion per year once corporate tax cuts, included in the 2008 and 2009 budget agreements, are fully implemented in 2015-16, according to the project's analysis. In 2009 Bakersfiled had the top two cheaters.
