When I was a renter in Oregon I could get a miniscule portion of my rent refunded when filing my state income taxes. As the state government and associated waste grew they kept raising property taxes and would you believe it.... the landlords passed those costs onto the renters!
Rather than fixing the problem by giving a few thousand landlords lower property tax rates for long term rental properties, the state instead decided to refund some of that property tax revenue directly to the renters by creating a burdensome tax code and new layers of bureaucracy to process and audit hundreds of thousands of renters filing this addition to their income taxes. Of course this didn't help the undocumented or people who otherwise didn't file income taxes.
They wouldn’t need to create this complicated system or expand an expensive, bloated bureaucracy if they simply gave rental property owners a tax break instead.
So the answer to the higher cost of a growing government was to grow the government. I can totally see Hawaii following this concept. In fact I'm surprised they haven't already. People would see that miniscule adjustment on their tax form and think, "our politicians are doing something!" when in reality all of the money disappeared into the bureaucracy so the "refund" really came from raising their landlord's taxes even more, which the renter pays.
Rather than fixing the problem by giving a few thousand landlords lower property tax rates for long term rental properties, the state instead decided to refund some of that property tax revenue directly to the renters by creating a burdensome tax code and new layers of bureaucracy to process and audit hundreds of thousands of renters filing this addition to their income taxes. Of course this didn't help the undocumented or people who otherwise didn't file income taxes.
They wouldn’t need to create this complicated system or expand an expensive, bloated bureaucracy if they simply gave rental property owners a tax break instead.
So the answer to the higher cost of a growing government was to grow the government. I can totally see Hawaii following this concept. In fact I'm surprised they haven't already. People would see that miniscule adjustment on their tax form and think, "our politicians are doing something!" when in reality all of the money disappeared into the bureaucracy so the "refund" really came from raising their landlord's taxes even more, which the renter pays.