Entries for 'Tom Yamachika'

... a kind of crabs-in-the-bucket argument ....

... Senate Bill 56, with the ominous title “Relating to Revenue Generation,” has been granted its first hearing by the Senate Ways and Means Committee ....

... “I am altering the deal.  Pray I don’t alter it any further.” ....

... We need to start recognizing that this “dedicated funding source” rhetoric is taking us down the wrong path ....

... Hold on to your wallets, folks, because this year’s great legislative adventure has just begun! ....

"... At the Legislature, committee hearings have begun in earnest and it doesn’t seem at all like we are in an economic crisis ...."

... Our unemployment system, as of January 8, 2021, has paid out $3.4 billion in unemployment benefits ....

... Ige’s Chief of Staff and former Director of Taxation Linda Chu Takayama told the House Finance Committee a little more about the revenue enhancement measures (tax hikes) that the Administration is going to propose ....

... “the carbon tax” is most likely the “barrel tax” ....

... There is still a lot of real estate between $0.3 billion and $1.4 billion a year ....

... possible unintended consequences ....

... “The following specific provisions of law are suspended, as allowed by federal law … Chapter 89, HRS, collective bargaining in public employment.” ....

... Developments during this COVID crisis have brought out tax scofflaws in some of the most unexpected ways ....

... The first problem is that some people think that the letter comes from a government agency. It doesn’t ....

...“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”....

... In a case called Timbs v. Indiana decided just last year, however, the U.S. Supreme Court made a couple of key points ....

...B&F basically told the departments, “Here’s your money. Go spend it.”....

...$2.28 billion within 257 accounts....

... The proposal is called Bill 80 ....

... the Governor issued a Fourteenth Supplementary Proclamation, in which the language suspending the Procurement Code was radically changed ....

...we have a state budget hole of more than 2 billion dollars....

...An accounting firm can’t arrest people, throw them in jail, or otherwise find that they have committed illegal activity....

...an example of leadership in the face of the COVID-19 crisis....

We are feverishly trying to spend federal dollars for the common good....

...The bill addresses the appearance of corruption....

...The governors zeroed in on two principal drivers of our government’s response, namely structural capability and leadership....

... The Auditor was supposed to start on the first chunk last year and finish the report before the start of the 2020 legislature, but ....

... “They have to be trained on what we do." --Dr. Sarah Park .…

...I’m not the only one trying to dig up information on where the money went....

...having to forgo, or pay back, a bunch of that money is not going to be a happy thing....

...Now that the economy is down and tax revenues are in the tank, we are now seeing cases of our Department of Taxation using some particularly nasty provisions in the tax code....

...In the meantime, the unemployed need to survive without any plus-up at all....

...employers are likely to be hit with a significant and automatic rate increase at the end of this year....

...Tax Foundation of Hawaii, urged the Legislature to adopt key provisions of the CARES Act although it became law in 2020. DoTAX, in testimony, proposed to adopt a few provisions and leave others on the cutting room floor....

...For tax benefits, the pendulum has started swinging in the other direction as well....

...unemployment insurance and how it is going to fare after the pandemic....

...Ige's COVID order suspends law requiring that people who want to do business with the State or municipal governments need to be current with their state and federal taxes....

... Can we afford to take the risk of building a new stadium with an entertainment center that may become a financial white elephant like our convention center? ....

...another general excise tax exemption that the State Auditor has put under the microscope....

...Carl Bonham told lawmakers that we’re going to lose another 30,000 people in just two years. A more pessimistic scenario assumes we are going to lose that 30,000 people in ONE year....

...tinkering with the tax code to raise more money has the effect of putting the brakes on what little spin we have left on our economic engine....

...figuring out how to spend $1 billion of federal money that is being made available to Hawaii under the CARES Act....

...the State Auditor has been busy at work trying to find options for legislators to consider for getting the state budget back on track....

... In the Seventh Supplemental Proclamation on May 6, the Administration backed off a bit ....

...Buried on the 19th page of a 68-page the document is a sentence suspending “Section 237D-6.5(b), distribution of the transient accommodations tax.”....

...the governor has suspended many laws....

...This is not a far-fetched scenario....

...Unless you like the idea of having doctors in rural areas being scarcer than toilet paper....

...The emergency proclamation suspends several laws, including chapters 89 and 89C, HRS, relating to collective bargaining....

...a 50-state study called “2020’s States with the Best & Worst Taxpayer ROI....”