RideFast points us to yet another reason why Better Half and I will never again live in Kalifornistan (as if we were having a shortage of those):
Starting Sunday, cash-strapped California will dig deeper into the pocketbooks of wage earners — holding back 10% more than it already does in state income taxes just as the biggest shopping season of the year kicks into gear.
Technically, it’s not a tax increase, even though it may feel like one when your next paycheck arrives. As part of a bundle of budget patches adopted in the summer, the state is taking more money now in withholding, even though workers’ annual tax bills won’t change.
Think of it as a forced, interest-free loan: You’ll be repaid any extra withholding in April. Those who would receive a refund anyway will receive a larger one, and those who owe taxes will owe less.
The article pretty well spells out the situation, but just to make it clear, the government of Kalifornistan is forcing you to give it more money, without recourse, that it promises to repay in the future.
1. Even if I promise to give someone their money back in the future, if I, as a private citizen, were to force someone else to give me money, that would be called “theft” and/or “robbery”, and rightfully criminally prosecuted. Why should our governments, entities created to serve and represent us as citizens, be treated any differently?
2. Kalifornistan is massively, hugely, absurdly in debt. Who, in their right minds, honestly believes that the politicians in Sacramento will have the situation resolved by April?
3. In the past, Kalifornistan has tried to pay for things with IOUs. Who wants to make bets as to whether or not they learned their lesson?
4. How is it that a state can simply decide to up the amount of your paycheck they are taking on a monthly basis, without any feedback or recourse? If that is against the state’s laws, how are they getting away with it? If it is legal, why are people tolerating it? And, in any case, I never want to live in a state where such a thing could happen, or such a thing be allowed to happen, again.
Actually, they changed to law to increase the withholding. It was part of the budget chicanery last go around.
It had a delayed start date, and nobody noticed it until now.
Ah, thanks for clarifying. In that case, I fault the Kalifornistanian’s for not noticing, but I still fault the politicians for trying, succeeding, and doing.