Saturday, February 18, 2017

The PSA Tax Relief Master Plan for California HE


The Reclaim California Higher Education (RCHE) Master Plan maintains that an additional $48 in annual taxes per median household would be enough to fix the system. The organization claims that this additional tax revenue would make all college and university education tuition-free and restore state funding to the 2001 level of 1.17% of AGI.

For several reasons, I think this “$48 fix” is broken. As an alternative, I will present the financials for what might be called, the PSA HE Tax Relief Master Plan.

My model – the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) – does not require additional tax money, but rather far less public money than is currently spent on HE. Of course, even if PSA were implemented, the government would not reduce taxes or give out refund checks; but nor would they be legislating new taxes, as RCHE recommends. And anyhow, one of the benefits of PSA is that the tax money it saves and earns the state can be used to improve the finance of other valued social goods such as healthcare or primary/secondary education.

But just for amusement let’s look at what that tax relief might look like under the PSA Master Plan. First, I’ll show what it costs to establish and operate a baseline academic practice under my model. Then, on a national scale I’ll look at existing sources of funding to see what can be accomplished with far less money, not more. Finally, I’ll apply the PSA finances to the California circumstance and estimate the scale of tax relief.

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