Cali SB 807; Tax Exempt Teachers
WARNING: This is not Fake News, read at your own risk.
Legislators in California recently introduced a bill that would offer educators major tax breaks in an effort to keep them in the classroom and combat the state’s growing teacher shortage.
The measure quickly drew fire from taxpayer advocates who criticized it as politically inspired favoritism.
Democratic senators Henry Stern of Los Angeles and Cathleen Galgiani of Stockton earlier this month introduced Senate Bill 807, which would exempt teachers from paying the state income tax – which would be the equivalent of a 4 percent to 6 percent salary increase – after five years in the classroom.
I thought major tax breaks were for the hedge fund guys and zillionaires?
“You’re not going to be able to get paid $50,000 a year and go live in the Bay Area, go teach at the local school…. we think it’s a pretty creative tool, we’ll see how the fiscal conservatives in this house want to approach this,” Stern told Fox 40.
Are college freshmen or the new Yale PC term “first years” threatened with getting their kneecaps busted if they don’t pick a teaching career path these days?
Fiscally conservative groups, including the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, criticized the bill. Jazz Shaw, writing on the group’s website, said that for lawmakers to pick certain groups to get privileged treatment is a slippery slope.
“If you take an entire class of people based on their occupation and say that they are somehow ‘more deserving’ than everyone else and should be exempted from paying state income taxes, what other groups might qualify? It’s not hard to imagine quite a few of these ‘deserving’ professions being rather quick to have their hands out,” he wrote.
You think? What about the doctors that save our lives? Police Officers? Wal-Mart greeters? Electricians? Pool Cleaners? Professional poker players? Pot dealers in Colorado? Perhaps they are jealous that illegal aliens and hookers dodge paying state income tax. It’s really anyone’s guess.
The bill is expected to enter committee review by the end of the month and has so far faced no opposition from lawmakers in either party. It is unclear, however, what the estimated loss in tax revenue to the state would be if the measure is approved.
No opposition? California teachers should ask the NEA leadership if they struggle to pay for housing, food and private schools for their children. Who would have thought that a union had fat cats up top like the meanies in Corporate America. Good grief. If this passes, like always, the middle class will carry the burden. I did notice the token male in the top four.
LILY ESKELSEN GARCIA, NEA PRESIDENT
Salary Breakdown (2015)
Total Compensation
$416,633.00
Gross Salary: $303,934.00
Allowances: $77,197.00
Official Business: $20,594.00
Other Compensation: $14,908.00
BECKY PRINGLE, NEA VICE PRESIDENT
Salary Breakdown (2015)
Total Compensation
$371,278.00
Gross Salary: $268,594.00
Allowances: $58,678.00
Official Business: $35,903.00
Other Compensation: $8,103.00
JOHN STOCKS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Salary Breakdown (2015)
Total Compensation
$407,264.00
Gross Salary: $304,709.00
Allowances: $77,974.00
Official Business: $23,972.00
Other Compensation: $609.00
PRINCESS MOSS, NEA SECRETARY TREASURER
Salary Breakdown (2015)
Total Compensation
$429,851.00
Gross Salary: $327,195.00
Allowances: $62,962.00
Official Business: $39,273.00
Other Compensation: $421.00
National Education Association Salaries
Speaking of housing and food, during the crash of 2008, then NEA Secretary-Treasurer Lily Eskelsen received a base salary of $248,349 and allowances of $54,285 for a total of $302,634. Also at that time, NEA President Reg Weaver raked in a whopping $686,949. I bet they struggled to make mortgage payments on their beach houses that year and could only eat out six days a week, bless their little hearts.
Legislators in California introduce bill to exempt teachers from state income tax
Category: "Teh Stoopid", Unions
FUCK the NEA and their state level minions… it’s always been about themselves, never “about the children”.
Not completely true HMC, they care about the children as long as it comes to indoctrinating them, and turning then into little leftist drones… now as to the actual welfare and education of said children??? yeah, not so much…
Anyone remember when California decided to come after military members for taxes on a portion of their retirement pay in perpetuity? They felt that if you spent X out of y years stationed in the state, then you owed them taxes on that percentage. Thousands of retirees got bills for back taxes. Effing bloodsuckers. Thankfully, saner minds prevailed.
At about the same time, a bunch of states were caught not taxing state retirees while at the same time taxing military retirees – a big no no. Virginia got caught and was told to refund the taxes paid by the military retirees. In a cynical move, they paid it out over four years. The payouts were back end loaded (I.e., the biggest chunk at four years) in the hopes that many of hem would die before then. Then, instead of not taxing military retirees, they decided to screw the state employees and tax them too…
Funny thing. California audited me while I was stationed there, twice. The first year I sent a response of “I’m in the US Army, my home of record is not California” and didn’t hear anything back.
The second year, they audited me while I was in Afghanistan. They only gave me 90 days to respond and by the time I got back home, they had already taken the money out of my savings account that I had in a bank that had branches in Cali. The bank sent me a letter saying, “per this law we had to give them this much money” and they took it all in one lump sum.
I had to work through the tax debt office to get it back and it took 3 months for them to pay it back to me.
Is that all? Lucky you.
I left CA in 2006. As in broke all ties–sold house, registered car in new state, all of it.
I was left a small sum of money a few years later, but because it was from deceased’s 401(k) I was responsible for taxes on it.
CA tried to take over $1000 of it, claiming I never registered my vehicle there after it expired in 2006, despite the fact THEY SENT A TITLE TO MY NEW HOME STATE DMV so they could reissue the title. Claimed it included penalties and interest as well.
Now let’s recap. SEA moves from CA. Reregisters vehicle in new home. CA DMV gets title request from new state DMV, which it issues. DMV then calls Franchise Tax Board and says, “HEY! SEA didn’t pay for registration on his vehicle. FTB tries to hold onto SEA’s money from inheritance.
Took me over seven months of weekly (or twice-weekly) calls before they cut my check.
That’s CA for you. And my relatives wonder why I have ZERO desire to go back.
I believe it and feel for you. A guy I worked with bought a vehicle there even though his home of record was Washington. They were charging him 500 a year just for registration, let alone all the money he was paying for gas because of the bullshit amount of crap he had to have in his SUV because of state smog requirements. (He was getting like 5-6 mpg)
He drove up to Washington after a year and had it registered there, took all the smog crap out of it and drove back. Washington registration is about 50 bucks a year.
I was there when the red light cameras were a big deal and out of control. People were having to pay fines of 4-500 for a red light camera fine and a lot of people were ignoring it. As I recall someone took them to court about it and found it was unconstitutional so they had to stop, especially with the excessively ridiculous fines.
PRINCESS (!) Moss?
Yikes! I bet she must be a real joy to deal with.
You mean that’s not her stage name so no one knows who she really is?
Beat me to it! What kind of a name is that? However, I wouldn’t mind her paycheck.
With a chunk o change like that, Mrs Dinotanker and the kids could live in a real house and Id be camping out in a GP large surrounded by many many disassembled, non-running, classic (to Me anyway) motorcycles, occasionally scanning eBay for a tank to park in the backyard…:)
This kind of thinking truly sucks, and as mentioned by many; once started with this; where do you stop allowing exemptions?
What kind of fucked up, moronic organization pays the #4 in the hierarchy more money than the #1? And why does anyone who’s supposed to be looking out for teachers and their students get paid in 6 figures?
Purely a coincidence that they will make tax-free the most loyal block of Democrat voters.
Including those high-paid teacher’s union folks, of course.
Purely a coincidence.
According to a salary web site the average pay for a midrange teacher at a midrange location is about 70k…starting wages are about 45k…progressing through that midrange to the highest rate of 88k…I realize California is expensive, and I realize we need more teachers, I should think a more appropriate driver towards teaching careers would be a low-cost or zero-cost subsidized education loan for qualified students who decide to attend college for teaching and will sign a document stating they will work for the school district for a period of time…say 6 years or so to qualify for that loan…
There are any number of ways to encourage people to become teachers, education reform is a tough nut in this country…look at what’s happening to Ms. DeVos to see just how hard the corrupt unions will defend themselves.
Oh that’s just their “salary” though VoV. California teachers get free health care for their immediate family and themselves, for life. Their kids are covered until 21 I believe.
They also get COLA depending on where they are working, among other things.
I was stationed there and used to listen to the rants about the teacher’s union and what teacher’s actually make. All total teachers are bringing in 6 figures after just a few years of being an educator.
They also have an appeals process that takes about 5 years to complete in order to fire a teacher. There are multiple appeal boards they can submit an appeal through “if” someone tries to fire them, or even reprimand them for something. All the while, they are still getting their pay and benefits, even if they aren’t teaching. If by chance they finally do get fired, they don’t have to pay back all that money, they stop getting paid after the final decision is made. I wish I had 5 years to do appeals before losing my job, in any field.
Thanks for the clarification, that adds some interesting aspects to that reality.
It sounds like they need an overhaul of the system from top down….usually because the fish rots from the head as they say…
Accidentally hit report, sorry about that.
When in LA an engineer was paying $105k/month to live in a closet, I can see why teachers are leaving.
Not even getting into the illegal aliens’ kids’ problems.
$105,000 a MONTH?!!!
Holy SHIT!
I fat fingered and mis-remembered.
That was supposed to be $1,400/month. Can I plead “Insufficient Coffee”, Y’honor?
Per this source:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-12/16-reasons-not-live-California
#10 California has some of the most ridiculous housing prices in the entire country. Due to a lack of affordable housing rents have soared to wild extremes in San Francisco, where one poor engineer was actually paying $1,400 a month to live in a closet.
Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Magna Culpa
Rent control? That is the usual reason people stop building rental housing.
The next reason is screw-unto-others taxes and regulations where only the top-tier rentals are money-makers.
Another reason are “helpful” mandates that require renting to sub-par rent payers, like the folks who think that only the first payment is required (to get in) and subsequent ones are optional. Can’t discriminate against bad-credit scofflaws, that wouldn’t be Cricket. Ditto those who think that non-payment eviction enables looting all major appliances.
And of course, mandating “livable” size apartments, prohibiting cohabitation arrangements, prohibiting sublet of surplus rooms, etc, etc, etc.
Taxing the snot out of residential property and services is another “helper”.
The more government tries to force “helping” the poor, the more people wind up helping themselves to -not- taking up the hassle of renting property to all but the most well heeled tenants, with squeaky-clean credit and big-check deposits, and big-tickets rent checks.
Your source at Zero Hedge is Michael Snyder who runs the Economic Collapse blog. Snyder is a lawyer from Florida, apparently pals with Alex Jones at InfoWars, and pretty much certifiable. The whole engineer $1400 closet thing apparently originated with a weak GUARDIAN STORY using questionable sources. For example, somebody attending a “coding bootcamp” is unlikely to be a real engineer in the true sense of the term.
From the link:
“Average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the Bay Area is just shy of $3,500 a month.”
That is pretty steep!
Somebody call a waaambulance! I’m so unhappy because I can’t live in a house on Telegraph Hill for $250 per month! Where’s my safe space? Where’s my binkie? Where’s my service dog named “Mao?”
HERE’S a link to Craigslist for Bay Area Housing. It’s, excuse the pun, all over the place price wise. An average figure is almost useless even if the source is accurate.
FWIW, people who spend a lot of time with demographics don’t consider specific price the main issue. Usually a housing market is considered healthy if the purchase cost of a typical single-family dwelling is no more than four or five times a typical annual wage. Rental prices are a reflection of those prices and tend to adjust accordingly.
I lived in Hermosa Beach in the mid-90’s.
At the time, a 1-BR (600 sq. ft.) apartment was $900/mo. We paid an extra $35/mo–$15/mo for a small refrigerator that sealed so poorly we had to defrost it every other week, and $20/mo for an extra parking space, which actually in HB, is a fucking steal.
Again, nothing terribly fancy about the place, in fact it was right across the street from the Redondo Beach power plant.
That same apartment today goes for $2400/mo, or about double my current mortgage payment.
So yeah, CA is more than a little ridiculous when it comes to housing costs and pretty much every other cost.
When I was in LA, I had a townhouse with a garage in a semi-run down community. It was in the “fake upper middle, really middle middle” class area. I was paying 1990 a month though my BAH was 2037. It was the best place I could find within 25 miles for a decent price. Places right near me were 2200-2800 for a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment.
Then, in 2009 they did severe cuts to BAH, including people working in parts of California. Oakland has the highest BAH rate, then NY City, then San Francisco. Luckily some of us were grandfathered in to maintain our BAH rate, but we had E5 AGRs coming in who had to live an hour or more away because they couldn’t afford to live any closer. My BAH in 2008 was higher as an E-7 than my BAH in 2012 as an E-8 for LA County. Oh and my COLA was 26 and then 28 bucks for living in Los Angeles.
Seems reasonable VOV.. seems to me that Service Academies have a similar deal.. we give you 4 years education and a commission, you serve for X-years.. if it’s good enough for the military, why should teachers or some other group get better?
That’ll never work! You can’t give people obligations! You monster!
I think you have a great idea, VOV, but that’s the response it would draw. Libs and RINOs are all about free-shit-giveaways, and requiring an obligation to be fulfilled is antithetical to them.
Similar to the work for welfare program, it will never happen.
Hey, man, it’s La-La-land. It’s way cool.
So glad I do not live there.
A convention of Californians who would think this a shame would probably fit in a $1400 closet.
Like Ex-PH2 said “it’s La-La-land.”
Comrade Lars will be along later today, after he crawls out of whatever hole he sleeps in, to explain to us how this is how all the U.S. of A. needs to operate because shut up.
More proof that the teacher’s union runs California.
Yet another bonus for teachers all the while California remains 46th of 50 states in education numbers. For each specific number they are still in the 40s.
Maybe they can supplement taxes by using that money sitting in the California Lottery system that is supposed to be getting used for education, but isn’t?
There’s “no opposition” because any legislature that votes against it will have millions of dollars of teacher’s union PAC money attacking them and supporting their opponent in the next election.
And none have the integrity and fortitude to give Damocles’s Sword the finger. They’re all too worried about keeping their own nests feathered.
As a school teacher in LA currently, I can say that quite a few of the comments posted are not true. I take home roughly $2300 per month, which is on the high end, since I work at a charter school. My public school colleagues are taking home sub $2k. The average rent for a decent place is between $900-1400, and my definition of decent are tagless neighborhoods. Referencing a comment above, there is no way a recent grad can work the job for a few years and make six figures. The only way for that to happen is if after 2-3 years they earn their masters and switch over to the administrator side, which is highly unlikely because the majority of schools i’ve worked at will not hire a 25 year old to run a school. Lastly, the healthcare is not for life, or the entire family(it stops at age 25 for children, and does not cover spouse unless they fall into a certain category). It used to be 10 years ago, but thats no longer the case. Even the retirement plan for LA used to be much better, but again, that was around 10 years ago. I do not support the tax exemption as its currently written. Would only support it if it exempted those who make less than $40k per year and are active full time teachers, because the education requirements in california to become a teacher are quite costly, and the majority of new teachers can barely survive the first couple of years, especially if they have families to support.
Something that makes little sense to me with this legislation is that those urban areas where the cost of living is highest are also those areas likely to have the lowest proportion of school-age children. Suburbia gets the kids, not the inner city.
Another problem with education in California is that although local property taxes are supposed to pay for local schools, there’s a lot of money filtered out at the state level to pay for an education bureaucracy that never sees the inside of a classroom.
Something else that tends to get ignored when it comes to throwing money at the problem is that private schools generally perform better than public schools when it comes to student achievement, even though private school teachers tend to be paid less. Those teaching in private schools say the reason is because the working conditions are usually better.
“I take home roughly $2300 per month, which is on the high end, since I work at a charter school. My public school colleagues are taking home sub $2k.” That’s just not credible. I looked at base salaries and average salaries for LA and other areas in CA and I looked at a table that figures all taxes on income. The result was that at 45K per year, the take home is 2900/month (over 12 mos.) And speaking of 12 months, you work fewer than that right? Thus, a teacher’s annual salary is not comparable to a non-teacher’s salary w/o accounting for the entire year or 3/4 of the non-teacher’s annual salary.
“Through its nationwide salary initiative, NEA is advocating for a $40,000 starting salary for all pre-K-12 teachers, and appropriate professional pay for higher education faculty and staff.”
NEA- Professional Pay
California 2011-2012 starting salary, $41,259.
That seems a bit more than;
“My public school colleagues are taking home sub $2k”.
Discussing “Take home pay” is part of the problem.
You keep voting for high taxes, to fund all sorts of things that boil down to forced transfer payments.
Take home pay also excludes all sorts of optional things like your insurance plan cost, 401k/retirement, sometimes even savings plans, etc.
So if you want less cut off the top, don’t vote for the folks who keep giving your check a buzz cut. Demanding a high-tax government that you want someone else to fund is a bit disingenuous, yes?
Or, move somewhere less confiscatory. If you are any good at teaching, there are plenty of places that will pay you for the work. The salary might not be as high ass your current one, but the local cost of living probably more than makes up for it, if only by not making mayhem with the clippers.
But please, teachers, stop with the “we deserve to be tax free” stuff. You don’t. You vote for the taxation, and for the folks who advocate for so much of it, so you have no moral ground to demand to be shielded from it.
Its a job, like most others, and different like all others. It isn’t a Patent of Nobility. “The same law applies to all folks” is a fundamental concept of the USA.
1400.00 a month to rent a crappy apartment!? Good lord!
Hmmm in the part of WA that I live in (on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains); 1400.00 a month would be danger close to the mortgage payment for a 250,000.00 house. That would probably be for something built in the mid 80’s to early 90’s, four bedrooms, 2 or 3 bathrooms with a big enough yard for the kids to toss a football around in.
I get that California has, well had, a great climate, but why in hells name would you want to live there?
Sometimes cheap house markets have crappy rental markets… Houston area is a good example. My daughter just bought the house your describe on 2 acres for $225K… but a one bedroom apartment rental will cost you a grand a month for someplace with 2×4 and sheetrock walls so thin that if your neighbor farts you can tell what he had for dinner.
There are many reasons I do not want to move back to Houston or the Houston area.
We have 7+ contiguous acres (including a pond) with 3 houses (built 1980s, nothing fancy – in fact quite the opposite), we purchased in stages for a total of around $94k. We own 6 acres outright, paying on the last acre and a 1980’s house that Mrs. G and I call home.
We pay under $600/month on our mortgage. The other acres cost us way less than that.
Depends on where you go. I’m in east San Diego County and pay $1600/month for the mortgage on a 3-bed, 2-bath with attached garage that has a 1/2-acre yard full of pine trees. My yard abuts a very nice meadow in a town whose elevation significantly exceeds its population. We’re selling the place, but only because Mrs. Whitey wants another bedroom for the third baby, and there’s a couple of nice places for sale right down the road from us that would do nicely.
Of course, my house–which I’m selling for $350k–would probably be worth $200k, tops, in Idaho or New Mexico, maybe even less. Still, it’s a damn sight better than $1400 to rent a fucking closet. And real estate in California gets downright reasonable if (unlike me) you’re willing to live in the desert (not the “arid by most standards but still has green trees and halfway-decent* weather,” the actual *desert* like what you Army vets got to experience at Fort Irwin) and that stretch of desert isn’t close to I-15.
* The “perfect weather” crap I always hear irritates me to no end. Perfect weather, as far as I’m concerned, never gets hotter than 65, and cools off enough to get a fire going in the woodstove. Where I’m at, it doesn’t usually get to 100 in the summer, which is great because I sweat my ass off in the high 70s, and it gets pretty chilly in the winter. Maybe not subzero like some of you are used to, but temperatures in the teens are not unusual between December and February. We even get snow up here, though I can’t stand the fucking coastal flatlanders that show up like a Biblical plague when we do. And all those idiots who talk about how great it’s been to not get rain (up until this winter, anyway) never seem to make the connection that “no rain=BIG fires.”
And even then, you’re getting raped on utility costs.
Case in point, a family friend (over) paid for a new place in Adelanto (near the I-15 of which you speak, but still “high” desert.)
First month’s electric bill? $1100. Yeah, you read that right.
Even I had to pick my jaw up off the floor for that one, and I’ve paid a few $300-400 bills when the Santa Ana winds kick up for a week or two.
California, the State ruled by fruits and nuts.
Teachers have better PR than the USMC, and that’s saying a lot. Personally, I wouldn’t give two cents for at least half of the teachers I had. One might say they instilled in my a lifelong distrust of teachers.
I had several great teachers growing up. One of them was my Step-Grandma (Dad’s Step-Mom)–small town, after all. I also had some mediocre ones. And I had a few that I wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire.
The first category had some new ones and some with tenure. The second was pretty much all tenured. The third? Every single one of those sacks of shit had tenure.
When I was a kid pretty much EVERY shitty Teacher belonged to the Union knowing it made firing them difficult as hell.
my me. See what I mean? Lousy teachers.
Have a friend who is a retired Calli school teacher. Her retirement income is into 6 figures. Granted, low 6 figures, but still. She moved out of the state as soon as she could because she is one of those pesky conservative types and just shakes her head at her own retirement income plus the bennies like health insurance. I just laugh at how much the fruits and nuts are paying her now.
The State legislature plays Kabuki with the budget nearly every year. They have the school districts micromanaged, so that their ONLY control is of the salaries.
Then, every damn year, they tell the school districts to make massive cuts, which inevitably results in a flurry of pink slips, always to the newest employees (union rules).
The obvious purpose is to cause as much pain as possible to parents, by screwing over the teachers.
Most of the pink slips get withdrawn, but after a few rounds of this, the energetic ones have found other work.
That tax exemption won’t make the teachers any better or the kids any smarter. A couple of districts here in Orange County sent out pink slips this week. California is the worlds cesspool.
Let me get this right. The group which is always lock and step with a never ending request for other people’s tax money are now trying to be exempt from taxes? Holy shit this is outrageous.
That’s yet another example of the Left’s hypocritical dogma since Marx first picked up a pen, FatCircles0311: “Fine for me, but not for thee.”
Equality my ass. The Left has always been about getting power (and the resulting special privileges) for the Left’s elite. They could care less about anyone else.