Originally Posted by
Novine
"The question is not how Detroit compares to other urban cities, but how it compares to accessible nearby cities here in Michigan."
By that standard, Detroit's always going to be excessive. It's never going to be as cheap to live in Detroit than it is to live in Ferndale or Southgate or Birmingham. Even if the city dumped the income tax, as you had proposed, the difference in property taxes between Detroit and those communities falls more heavily on property owners in Detroit than the income tax.
"But in Detroit's case, again, carrying the highest rates with the lowest return on investment is, in my opinion, a big, big part of the problem. You keep trotting out strawmen simplistic tax theories; I'm not talking about any of those, but this very specific case.."
In the list of problems plaguing Detroit, it's probably not even top 10. It's also countered by the fact that some of the most desirable communities in SE Michigan, Ann Arbor and Birmingham and the Grosse Pointes, have some of the highest tax rates compared to their neighboring communities. Yet people want to live there and pay more in taxes. It's also countered by the fact that many suburban communities have gone through the same cycle of depopulation and disinvestment but don't have a local income tax. Have you been to Inkster or Hazel Park or Riverview? Dumping the city's income tax doesn't do anything to change what really ails Detroit and there's little evidence that such a strategy would help the city long-term.
As I pointed out in an earlier discussion on tax rates, if Detroit's going to cut any taxes, the income tax is the last tax it wants to cut. If and when the economy in the city recovers, only the income tax has the ability to grow with the city's economy in any appreciable way. Property taxes are capped by Headlee and fall only on property owners, while the income tax is more widely spread across the resident and corporate taxpayers.
The last time we discussed this issue, you claimed that there was $85 million in reductions that Bing had identified that could make up for lost revenue from dumping the city income tax. Where are those? Why hasn't Bing implemented them? You claimed that the city could continue to provide the core services that it needs to provide even without that revenue. In light of what we know now, do you still stand by that statement?