Another week, another study putting a price on tax limits. The verdict: $1.9 billion of more power to you.
The latest numbers come from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the gold standard of Wisconsin government data. The bureau reported this week that had the Taxpayer Protection Amendment been at work for the past 20 years, the state would have collected $1.9 billion less in taxes in 2003-’04 – a 14% cut. Had the amendment been in place for 10 years, the state’s take would have been 3.6% less in 2003-’04.
There was a more dramatic assessment last month when Andrew Reschovsky, an economist and public policy analyst at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that state revenue would have been a third less in 2003 had the amendment’s revenue limits been running since the mid-1980s.