More libertard zombie lies

And now here go the libertards again, claiming that "businesses are fleeing California due to high taxes". Err.... no. We have two separate studies on this over the past ten years. Businesses aren't fleeing California for *any* reason, taxes or no. The the vast majority of businesses closing shop in California are doing so due to bankruptcy, not taxes. Furthermore, 40% of new venture-funded companies are in California -- California is still by far the preferred state to start a new company in. F

Furthermore, California's tax rates for corporations and the wealthy aren't even that onerous, due to California's generally non-progressive tax scheme. From a standpoint of the wealthy, the top 1% pay only 7.4% of their income as state and local taxes (the bottom pays 20% pays 10.2% of their income as taxes), which is pretty much middle of the pack (look through the data in that paper and you'll see that the top 1% pays on average around 7% of their income as state and local taxes of all sorts). California's statutory corporate income tax rate of 8.84% also isn't out of the ordinary, being somewhat in the middle of the pack (still looking for effective tax rate, but given that California gives billions in tax breaks to corporations (whether it's the bogus "enterprise zones" or "pay taxes only on sales within California" break), it'll be somewhat lower. As I previously pointed out, corporate property taxes have been shifted to individuals due to various tax shelters available with Proposition 13 (the "partnership" shelter being the big one -- by leasing your building from a "partnership" which has held ownership of it since initial construction, you lock in your property taxes at its initial construction rate). The end result of all this is that California does have high taxes -- if you're in the bottom 20% of taxpayers. For everything else, California's in the middle of the pack.

So there's the facts. There's no evidence that a) California has high taxes on corporations or the rich, or that b) high taxes are causing corporations or the rich to flee California. Indeed, the evidence explicitly contradicts both assertions. Yet the zombie lies still get repeated time after time by zombie liars.... it is to laugh, if it wasn't for the fact that they're so effective at catapaulting their propaganda lies via repitition after repetition, until the majority think their lies are true.

-- Badtux the Fact-based Penguin