I live in California. The state with highest tax rate in the country.
For whatever historic reasons our street is not maintained by the city, nor by the county (we are in Marin County). Obviously not by the State of California.
Every 10 years neighbors get together and we hire a contractor to patch the holes in the street and coat with tar.
We have no public lights, each house installs a light in front on the entrance.
Our public high school is severely underfunded. There is side system funded by parents/PTA to maintain projetcs, art classes, etc.:
https://www.tamvalleypta.com/
Kiddo (https://kiddo.org/) raise $3M every year to fund just about everything:
What Kiddo! Funds
At every elementary school, Kiddo! funding pays for many people and programs.
Kiddo! provides funding for the salaries for all Art teachers, Music teachers, Chorus teachers, Orchestra and Band teachers, and P.E. teachers; plus salaries for almost every Classroom aide, and every Library aide in our District.
Kiddo! also funds Dance programs in every grade, Poetry and/or Drama instruction in every grade, and multiple Innovative Teacher Grants.
At MVMS, Kiddo! funding also pays for many programs and teachers:
Kiddo! funds 100% of the salaries for all Art teachers, Instrumental Music teachers, and Vocal Music teachers, plus Music Technology, and our MVMS Library Aide
Kiddo! funds 100% of the Specialist Contracts to teach Dance in all grades, and Poetry in 6th grade.
Kiddo! funds the Greek Mythology workshops for all of 6th grade, Shakespeare program and performances for all 7th grade classrooms, Word for Word literary drama program for all 8th grade classes, a Yoga unit for all grades during P.E., an all-school Robotics Club, and several innovative teacher grants.
Kiddo! also provides funding for the all-school Spring Cabaret for all grades.
Kiddo! also provides funding for technology, including computers and software for classrooms, plus the salaries of our district-wide Instructional Tech Coach and some of the tech support staff. Read more about the District Tech Plan here.
Arts Education in Mill Valley Public Schools
Because of Kiddo!, the Mill Valley School District is able to provide our students with an unparalleled, top-notch education that values the arts as much as any other content area. This is integral to our Strategic Plan, and it is a point of pride for our District that students in all six of our schools participate in a diverse array of enriching experiences that deepen and expand their learning every year, from transitional Kindergarten through 8th grade.
How Kiddo! Helps Elementary and Middle School Teachers
Support for Core Curriculum. The arts and P.E. are not "extras." They are part of the core curriculum in California. Kiddo! funds pay for the art, music and elementary P.E. teachers, and provide dance, drama and poetry specialists.
Specialized Instruction. In districts that can't afford dedicated staff for art or P.E., classroom teachers often teach these subjects, squeezing them in when they can. Mill Valley students receive regularly scheduled art, music, drama, dance, poetry and P.E. from professionals trained in these subjects.
Support for Differentiated Learning. Because Kiddo! funds classroom aides, teachers have more prep time and more time to dedicate to students. They can provide more attention to students who need it and more challenges for students who are excelling.
Teaching Grants. Kiddo! also funds grants so classroom teachers can try new and innovative programs. This year Kiddo! has funded over $50,000 in teaching grants across the District.
Teaching Teachers. – Kiddo! provides the funding for our district-wide Instructional Technology Coach whose primary focus is to assist classroom teachers to successfully integrate instructional strategies using multiple technologies.
Funding for Other Needs. Kiddo! fills holes in other critical areas such as supporting professional development and funding most of our tech support team.
Each year, with the help of parent volunteers from every school, Kiddo! raises over $3 million in funds for our District, to help us deliver a complete education to Mill Valley’s public elementary and middle school students.
Learn more about volunteering, events, and other ways to get involved at http://kiddo.org/
LOL..."Highest Tax Rate" in the country. This is the state which passed Prop 13 -- locking property tax rates at 1970's levels. The decline in property tax revenue is why parents are having to self-fund school programs.
Unless the property is sold, Prop 13 caps the increase at no more than 2% annually. So if you have owned a home for more than 10 years, the tax basis is probably way lower than market value -- particularly in a place like Marin County.
The cost of provisioning public services depends on the cost of paying workers to live here, which has done a lot more than "increased pretty reliably."
Hmm, I don't quite understand this methodology. This site lists my state, Massachusetts, as having a 3.29% individual income tax burden, but our income tax rate is a flat 5% (no brackets). I'm looking at the exemption list (https://www.mass.gov/service-details/view-massachusetts-pers...) and I can't see how it could possibly make that big of a difference.
The dependent exemption and old age exemptions definitely look like they could knock out 1.5% of income. If you have an income of 70k and two dependents, you would have an effective tax rate of 2.14%.
Always brought up and a bit of a red herring. Averaged out, yes. But prop 13 gives older generations are far lower tax burden. If you’re a young home owner in California, it’s absolutely the highest tax burden in the country.
It's not a red herring. If I think my taxes are too high, and I hear "California has the highest taxes in the country!", I will think, "Oh, California should spend less money so my taxes go down." But if I hear "California has extremely high taxes for people like me, but very low taxes for certain other rich people," I will think, "California should reform its tax policies so that it gets more money from those people and less from me."
Superlatives are weird. You can claim California has the highest tax rate and it could actually just be average, because you aren’t technically comparing against anything. If the commenter said “California has the highest tax rate compared to any other state”, the statement would be false, but leaving out the comparison makes it true by default.
Of course, that’s just advertising law (what you can legally claim about your product), this is an online forum based on higher standards.
I'm not confusing them, but highest tax rate is a useless statistic. Quoting it is thus usually used to push and agenda, not to understand and explain a complex situation.
How is “Tax Burden” calculated? How is “personal income” determined? This is opaque and essentially meaningless. It remains true that California has the highest tax rate in the country.
If that’s the case then something is wrong with their data. They say that 3.78% is the individual income tax “burden” on personal income in California and that is just not true unless they are doing some sort of average across the population. The income tax rate in California can be as high as ~13%
> They say that 3.78% is the individual income tax “burden” on personal income in California and that is just not true unless they are doing some sort of average across the population.
Why do so many people not understand how graduated income taxes work? And why wouldn’t you average the tax burden across the entire California population when calculating its “tax rate”, unless you are claiming the highest tax rate in California someone could actually pay rather than the rates paid on average?
One camp is referencing the max. The other camp is referencing the average. The max does not refute the average and vice versa therefore both are misleading. A distribution would be more clear.
> If one means to say highest maximum tax rate, just say it. No weasel interpretations.
To be fair, when people criticize the tax rate, be it state or federal, it is usually implied they are referencing the highest tax rate. Apples to apples, it’s a rough but fairly accurate proxy for relative so called “tax burden.” One would expect states with roughly equivalent highest tax rates to scale their tax rates about the same as income goes down.
> One would expect states with roughly equivalent highest tax rates to scale their tax rates about the same as income goes down.
That is incredibly stupid. Someone (single) in Alabama making $40k/year is paying 4.07% effective state income tax rate, in California they are just paying 2.37%. States with lower top tax rates are usually more regressive than states with higher top tax rates, red southern states being the main example of states with regressive taxation.
> That is incredibly stupid. Someone (single) in Alabama making $40k/year is paying 4.07% effective state income tax rate, in California they are just paying 2.37%.
This actually validates my point. 40K in Alabama goes a lot farther than 40K in California, based on differences in average cost of living. Just look at relative gas prices. Why are you so hostile? You shouldn’t bully fellow commenters on HN.
That wasn’t the argument being made. The one stated that higher top tax rates mean higher low tax rates as well is false, the converse is true.
Alabama is nearly last in everything for a good reason. That Californians have a much longer life expectancy (with correspondingly lower obesity rates and fewer health problems) shows that there is more to measuring COL than just what people can buy.
I only pointed out that the assumption that higher top tax rates meant higher bottom tax rates as well is incredibly stupid, if anything, the converse is true (higher top tax rates usually mean lower bottom tax rates, not higher).
The top rate 12.3% only applies to income in excess of $600k for single and $1.2m for married. How is quoting this rate at all relevant for average people?
Marin county is the 6th-richest county in the U.S. Yet, it has locked itself into the same infrastructure spending death spiral that so many other places have initiated, by having roads all over the place going nowhere, and no growth in existing urbanized areas to increase revenue and amortize the cost of road maintenance.
How widely spread are these heavily funded PTA setups in CA? Base on my limited visibility while living in SF and on the peninsula, this setup seems to run rampant -- for the areas with people that can afford it. Is any of the funding gathered devoted to legislating for fixing funding for all kids in the state?
I am not sure. As often is the case, if you want your kids to go to public schools, you step in and fund an organization (in this case Kiddo) to provide funding for anything the state does not provide. The same folks just want to see their money going 100% to fund classrooms, teachers and projects.
It is very efficient. All volunteers. 100% of your money is put to good use.
Funding legislation is a whole different Hydra and the best way to go nowhere while you have kids in school. Focus on the short term and support classes and teachers right now.
For whatever historic reasons our street is not maintained by the city, nor by the county (we are in Marin County). Obviously not by the State of California. Every 10 years neighbors get together and we hire a contractor to patch the holes in the street and coat with tar. We have no public lights, each house installs a light in front on the entrance.
Our public high school is severely underfunded. There is side system funded by parents/PTA to maintain projetcs, art classes, etc.: https://www.tamvalleypta.com/
Kiddo (https://kiddo.org/) raise $3M every year to fund just about everything:
What Kiddo! Funds
At every elementary school, Kiddo! funding pays for many people and programs.
At MVMS, Kiddo! funding also pays for many programs and teachers: Arts Education in Mill Valley Public SchoolsBecause of Kiddo!, the Mill Valley School District is able to provide our students with an unparalleled, top-notch education that values the arts as much as any other content area. This is integral to our Strategic Plan, and it is a point of pride for our District that students in all six of our schools participate in a diverse array of enriching experiences that deepen and expand their learning every year, from transitional Kindergarten through 8th grade.
How Kiddo! Helps Elementary and Middle School Teachers
Each year, with the help of parent volunteers from every school, Kiddo! raises over $3 million in funds for our District, to help us deliver a complete education to Mill Valley’s public elementary and middle school students.Learn more about volunteering, events, and other ways to get involved at http://kiddo.org/