California

Gas tax revenues are on an unsustainable course. Over the last five years, Congress has transferred more than $53 billion from the general fund to the transportation fund in order to compensate for lagging gas tax revenues. By 2015, the transportation fund will be insolvent unless an additional $15 billion transfer is made. Larger transfers will be needed in subsequent years.

Colorado has become infamous for its Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, a constitutional amendment restricting growth in revenue collections to an arbitrary "population-plus-inflation" formula. Although TABOR has had significant negative effects on Colorado's finances, similar proposals have surfaced in at least 30 states over the past decade. None of these proposals were approved, and in five states they were placed directly on a state-wide ballot where they were rejected by voters. Even in Colorado itself, citizens voted to suspend TABOR for five years in an effort to allow the s

State and local tax codes include a huge array of special tax breaks designed to accomplish almost every goal imaginable: from encouraging homeownership and scientific research, to building radioactive fallout shelters and caring for "exceptional" trees. Despite being embedded in the tax code, these programs are typically enacted with tax policy issues like fairness, efficiency, and sustainability only as secondary considerations. Accordingly, these programs have long been called "tax expenditures." They are essentially government spending programs that happen to be housed in the tax code for ease of administration, political expedience, or both.