MuniLand

The debate surrounding the sacred cow of municipal bond tax exemption is reaching new heights. In a recent report from the National League of Cities, estimates by SIFMA (the dealer trade group) show that municipal governments would have paid an additional $173 billion in interest over 10 years with a 28 percent cap on municipal bond tax exemption. And if Congress had fully repealed the municipal bond tax exemption, municipal issuers would have paid an additional $495 billion in interest costs over the last 10 years. These amounts would be on top of the $1.09 trillion in interest paid on municipal bonds in the last 10 years under the current law.

SIFMA/NCL arrived at these projections using this method (page 6-7) emphasis mine:

The information in Chart C was determined by taking the amount of interest paid by each jurisdiction in the last fiscal year, with a median interest average of 4.69 percent over the past 15 years (Thomson Reuters), and applying a 70 BPS increase for what the interest costs would have been if the bonds were issued with a cap in place, and applying a 200 BPS increase for what the interest costs would have been if the bonds were issued without the exemption in place.

The problem with this model is that we already have a market-based correlation to understand how much additional cost municipalities would face if the tax exemption were completely removed. All we need do is look at the taxable municipal bond market and compare those yields with tax-exempt yields.

Although taxable muniland only has about 8 percent of the trading activity of the tax-exempt market, there are still about 2,900 trades a day (page 77). This is enough for Thomson Reuters Municipal Market Data to evaluate yield levels for all maturities and credit levels. 72 percent of MSRB’s trades in 2012 were either AAA, AA or A, and across the 1-30 year yield table the average MMD spread for these ratings was 86 basis points. This is not far from SIFMA/NLC’s estimate of 70 basis points for capping the muni bond tax at 28 percent.

Last month, Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuño delivered a speech at the libertarian Reason Foundation on “how Puerto Rico avoided becoming “America’s Greece.” In his talk, the governor espoused the anti-government ethos of Grover Norquist, whom he cited as a friend in the first minute of his remarks. Fortuño has been a staunch advocate of “right-sizing” government: Soon after taking office, he laid off a substantial number of the commonwealth’s employees and reduced the island’s personal, corporate and property taxes.

Despite these cuts, Puerto Rico’s budget is still unbalanced. Fortuño has been relying on bond issuance through COFINA, the government’s off-balance-sheet, special-purpose vehicle, to make up for annual shortfalls to his budget.

Now, Republicans in Congress are working to blow another hole in Fortuño’s budget. As part of their effort to stave off the impending, automatic cuts to the defense budget, House Republicans passed legislation that kills a special provision of the Affordable Care Act increasing Medicaid grants to Puerto Rico. Faced with the threat of losing billions of dollars in federal payments each year, Fortuño now seems to think that lower federal spending is not that appealing. He pushed back on these cuts in an op-ed on CNN.com:

Chris Mauro, head of U.S. municipal strategy at RBC Capital Markets, sent around a comment note suggesting that the media coverage of the Senate Finance Committee hearing Wednesday that included discussion of possible changes to the taxation of municipal bonds was overheated:

Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing entitled “Tax Reform: What It Means for State and Local Tax and Fiscal Policy”. A simple reading of the media accounts of this hearing would lead one to believe that the entire event was dedicated to a detailed discussion of the future of the tax-exempt status of municipal bond interest. So we decided to review the tape of the hearing in order to see what in fact was discussed. In reality, the vast majority of the hearing was focused on two issues – the deductibility of state and local taxes by federal taxpayers and the ability of state and local governments to collect sales taxes on internet and catalog purchases.

Both Committee Chairman Max Baucus and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch made some passing comments about tax-exempt bonds and the federally subsidized taxable Build America Bond (BABs) program, with Baucus making generally positive statements about BABs and Hatch making generally negative ones. Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington State expressed some concern about the importance of tax-exempt bond financing to public power utilities in the northwest, but beyond that, there wasn’t a whole lot of discussion about the muni tax exemption.

In addition to federal taxes, Americans are responsible for paying state and local sales, personal income and property taxes, and a variety of fees for the use of their cars, sewer systems and water systems. Although approximately 47 percent of the population pays no federal income tax, those people do contribute to public safety, education and welfare through their state and local taxes (and, it should be noted, also pay federal payroll taxes). Across the nation, sales taxes bring in about one-third of state revenues, personal income tax revenues bring in another third, and a variety of other taxes and fees make up the balance.

Rarely do you hear cries from the citizenry to have their taxes raised – usually you hear people lament that rates are too high. A recent Bloomberg slideshow listed aggregate tax rates by state but used data that did not include local tax rates. Many of the 1,256 comments on the slideshow pointed out that the information was wrong. In almost every comment that I read, people thought that their taxes were too high.

The response of state governments to their citizens’ cries for lower taxes has been ambivalent. While states decreased their sales taxes by $5.2 billion for 2012, they also increased personal income taxes by $3 billion, according to a National Conference of State Legislatures poll. There is a lot of variance among states in sales tax rates, though: Five states collect no state sales tax, and 13 states have an average local sales tax rate of zero. State and local governments are looking for additional revenue from every available source, but I predict that we will mainly see increases in income taxes for higher earners rather than increases to sales tax rates.

There are shale gas fields covering more than half of the United States, but Pennsylvania has emerged as the rising star of domestic energy production with its “Mighty Marcellus” fields. This is a great resource for Pennsylvania, but I’ve been confused about legislation that would impose an “impact fee” on shale gas producers instead of the traditional volume-based royalty structure used by other states. The loss of revenues to the state over the next 20 years using the “impact fee” could be approximately $24 billion using current gas prices. If gas prices doubled (they are currently at 10-year lows), losses to the state could exceed $48 billion or more.

The energy states of North Dakota, Wyoming, Texas and Oklahoma historically have earned substantial revenues from energy royalties. It seemed odd that Tom Corbett, the Pennsylvania governor who received substantial campaign contributions from gas producers, barred his shale gas commission from even considering a royalty or gas tax.

When energy producers do cost-benefit analyses, they use very sophisticated modeling in which the primary input is the quantity of “recoverable” oil or gas in an area. The second input is the projected demand and supply for energy, which in turn determines its price. Finally, the modelers factor in business expenses, primarily the depth of well drilling required and the cost to haul the energy to a pipeline terminus or railroad depot. In the case of natural gas they might include the cost to liquefy the gas for easier transport. Generally at the end of all the calculations they look at the cost of paying mineral rights fees to landholders and royalty fees to the state. All these inputs move around constantly, and projecting them years or decades ahead requires quantitative wizardry.

The latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, released yesterday, wasn’t pretty. Housing values continued to fall, their 5th consecutive year-on-year decline. (You can download the data here). The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland had this to say about the release:

According to today’s [Case-Shiller] report, the fourth quarter started with broad-based declines in home prices… On an annual basis, the 10-city composite is down 3 percent and the 20-city composite is down 3.4 percent, and eighteen of the 20 MSAs are also in negative territory.

Basically, there’s blood on the streets everywhere.

The Federal Reserve Board reports in its Flow of Funds data (line 4) that the value of household real-estate assets has declined from $22.7 trillion in 2006 to $16.1 trillion in the third quarter of 2011. That’s a loss of 30 percents. Have revenues from property taxes, which are supposed to reflect the property valuations, mirrored the same decline?

Ever wonder whether people or corporations carry a heavier tax burden? Well, it’s not even close: people pay more in taxes by a long shot.

First, let’s look at federal tax statistics. In 2008, corporations paid 12.0 percent of federal revenues; the figure for individuals was 45.3 percent. Similarly, total corporate income tax after credits came in at $200 billion in 2008, while total individual federal income tax over the same period was $1.145 billion.

Now let’s look at state tax stats. In 2008 corporations paid 4.27 percent of state and local revenues; over the same period individuals paid 27.9 percent of state revenues. Similarly, state corporate income taxes came in at $52 billion while state personal income taxes came in at $301 billion and state sales taxes came in at $ 278 billion.

State and local employees have not been as hard hit as the general economy. At 19 million strong, this workforce comprises about 14.6 percent of total U.S. non-farm employment. It looks as if education workers are particularly being shielded from job cuts.

Chris Mauro, Head of U.S. Municipals Strategy at RBC Capital Markets wrote today in a privately circulated research note (emphasis mine):

[O]n a percentage basis, the state general government (non-education) sector has seen the largest decline in employment since December 2007. As of October 2011, it is down almost 6% from its recent peak.

State tax collections are hot, hot, hot. The taxman rustled up 16 percent more in state income taxes for the second quarter of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010. Where is this phenomenal growth coming from?

Based on the most recent data collected by the Rockefeller Institute, states are raking in about $900 billion a year from their three major tax categories: the sales tax, personal income tax and corporate income taxes. Revenues from these three taxes total about 6.25% of U.S. GDP.

But it’s the personal income tax (PIT) that’s really driving the show. In the state of New York the PIT makes up about 60 percent of total tax revenues. In Oregon the PIT is an astonishing 72 percent of the state’s tax haul. Although the national employment level improved slowly the PIT was up on average 11.4 percent across the country year over year, according to Rockefeller. This contrasts sharply with the 4.6 percent national increase in state sales tax collections, especially given that 21 states cut their PIT tax rate while only 12 states cut their sales tax rates.

Now that the Senate failed to pass President Obama’s jobs legislation last night, various pieces of his plan and other pet projects are likely to be introduced separately. It’s unclear whether an extension of the payroll tax reduction or additional unemployment benefits — two key planks of the President’s plan — will get floor time. But corporate interests are getting plenty of attention from members of the Senate. In particular, an army of corporate lobbyists has been vigorously promoting a tax holiday for U.S. multinationals.

Politico says the senior New York US Senator, Democrat Chuck Schumer:

has been quietly courting some Senate Republicans and Democrats to see whether there is any appetite for merging a GOP-backed idea — a tax holiday for corporations to bring home their overseas profits — with a Democratic-supported plan of creating a national infrastructure bank.

There is no evidence that giving multinational corporations a big tax break on profits earned overseas will create jobs or stimulate the economy. But some, like former director of the Congressional Budget Office Douglas Holtz-Eakin, believe that a tax holiday will actually create economic growth. Holtz-Eakin writes in Bloomberg: