Michigan Form 165 Instructions 2012: Fill & Download for Free

This certainly is interesting.It is a bit difficult to comment, though, given that most sources on the Internet are biased. The budget questions are always complicated; deficits can be disguised or enlarged using clever accounting gimmicks.What I found from Scott Walker's 2015 Budget:"Four years ago, Wisconsin faced a $3.6 billion budget deficit, property taxes had risen 27 percent over the previous decade, increasing every year, and the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent. Years of budgetary mismanagement and unchecked spending meant the State had bills it could not pay. The Budget Stabilization Fund (Rainy Day Fund) was nearly empty. The shortfall in fiscal year 2010-11 was representative of the longer-term problem – Wisconsin had a corrosive deficit because of a very simple math problem: state spending continually exceeded its revenue. State government was consistently in a reactive mode, subject to spending drivers, such as Medicaid and public employee personnel costs, which consumed resources without restraint. In prior biennia, one-time fixes and delayed payments damaged our State's fiscal foundation. The federal stimulus cash bought us little, except more time for further budgetary negligence. Predictably, this left even bigger holes, as budgeting for the moment and out of convenience was consciously chosen over planning for the future.""Today, Wisconsin has a balanced budget, property taxes on a median-valued home have decreased in each of the last four years, the unemployment rate is down to 5.2 percent, and Wisconsin is 12th in the nation in growth in per capita personal income growth. New business ventures are up nearly 11 percent, while in November 2014 Wisconsin experienced its greatest month of private sector job growth since 1990. We have also been able to invest in educational opportunities that improve the skills of our workforce and match employees with the highly-skilled jobs being created by manufacturing and other strong industries.""As a result, our economy is growing, and both job seekers and job creators are reaping the benefits. In 2010, 10 percent of employers surveyed said that our state was headed in the right direction. In 2012, 93 percent said Wisconsin is heading in the right direction. In 2014, employers expressed greater optimism about our economy than at any time since the Great Recession. This turnaround was boosted with targeted tax relief efforts, such as the manufacturing and agricultural tax relief programs enacted by Governor Walker and the Legislature in 2011, and other mechanisms to encourage investment and reduce the regulatory burdens on job creators. We have already observed businesses utilizing these benefits to create new jobs, increase wages and further grow our economy.""Wisconsin has a deficit under generally accepted accounting principles due to the state's long-term commitment to stabilize and equalize local property taxes. Payments for shared revenue and local property tax relief are paid during the local government fiscal year but are delayed in the state budget to the state's subsequent fiscal year. While this mismatch is a major contributor to the state's deficit under generally accepted accounting principles, the delay has been in place for decades in order that local government budgets, and associated local levies, remain stable."Scott Walker's Budget Projections"In the next biennium, the standard relating to annual GPR debt service will be reduced compared to the percentages for the 2013-15 biennium. Projected annual debt service payments, as a percentage of general fund tax revenues, are 4.2 percent and 3.7 percent for the 2015-17 biennium, compared to 5.2 percent and 4.5 percent annually for the 2013-15 biennium. The State made higher debt service payments in the 2013-15 biennium, resulting from the structural refunding authorizations or other actions in previous biennia that deferred debt service payments to the 2013-15 biennium and future years. The State was committed to paying debt service payments due in the 2013-15 biennium, which peaked at all-time highs, and remains committed to making debt service payments in the 2015-17 executive budget. The amount of outstanding State debt paid from GPR has decreased by 8.1 percent over the past two years, and with limited new bonding authority in this 2015-17 executive budget, this trend will continue.""The State looks favorable when rating agencies combine outstanding debt and unfunded pension liabilities. In this analysis, the aggregate obligations for the State are "below the median for U.S. States." In November 2014, Moody's Investors Service changed the outlook on the State's bond rating to "positive" from "stable." This outlook change was due, in part, to the State's increased liquidity and the strength of its pension program."Scott Walker also writes that:"Coupled with a nearly $1.6 billion reduction in our Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) deficit since 2011 and the strongest public employee pension system in the nation, it is clear why businesses and investors are bullish on Wisconsin. These achievements are the opposite of many other states, where bonding downgrades, upside-down pension funds and structural problems combine to place a stranglehold on prosperity."There were downgradings in the Standard and Poor's bond ratings of neighboring states, such as Minnesota and Illinois. Iowa's and Michigan's have remained constant.Wisconsin has a lower debt burden than other states. Wisconsin's state debt per capita is $7,863, lower than the national average of $16,178 per capita, and ranked 47th lowest in the country. The debt burden is lower than in the neighboring states of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota. Only Tennessee, Nebraska and Indiana have lower state debt burdens per capita. Neighboring Illinois ranks 5th nationally, with a debt burden higher than all states except Alaska, Hawaii, Connecticut and Ohio.It should also be noted that: "As the economy has responded to our policies, we have been able build a strong financial reserve. For three consecutive years (fiscal years 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13), Wisconsin made significant contributions to its Rainy Day Fund – the only time it has done so in consecutive years. The Rainy Day Fund now has a $279 million balance after years of neglect and is more than 165 times larger than when Governor Walker took office."Scott Walker has apparently provided tax relief to the taxpayers of Wisconsin:Scott Walker has slowed the growth of property taxes:Also, Wisconsin ranked #9 in terms of income tax revenue to GSP in 2010, #11 in 2014, and is projected to fall to #14 in 2015, according to USGovernmentRevenueThis Bloomberg BusinessWeek article, "Scott Walker's Lagging Indicators",is less sanguine over Wisconsin's performance.While Wisconsin lags the national median, Wisconsin is ahead of 3 of its neighbors, Michigan, Iowa and Illinois.Also, I don't know how fair this is, because this starts immediately after Walker took office, before he had time to make policy changes and there could have been residual effects from the policies of prior governors. There also are other factors: North Dakota, for example, leads the nation in income growth, but much of this is due to an uptick in oil and gas extraction along the Bakken formation.It's difficult to reach a definitive conclusion on how Walker has performed relative to other state governors. Clearly the state has improved, but it is difficult to decompose the turnaround into (a) effects due to Walker's leadership and (b) effects of the broader national recovery.What is noticeable is that Wisconsin did a quicker job reducing the deficit than the federal government. Wisconsin law mandates that the two-year budget be balanced. "Why?" you may ask.All US states, except for Vermont, have some form of balanced budget amendment. The federal government, on the other hand, continues to run deficits year after year: the budget was last balanced in 2001, and it was only balanced four times since 1970 and nine times since 1950. Why can the federal government run deficits, but the states cannot?Simple: A state is more beholden to the whims of the bond market than the federal government is.A state cannot run a deficit indefinitely, because if it does, the bond markets will anticipate future defaults and demand a high interest rate premium on new debt, as well as on existing debt when it is rolled over, making it costly to engage in prolonged deficit spending. This acts as a brake on state debt. State debt is $5.1 trillion, or $16,178 per capita, as opposed to a federal debt of $18 trillion, or $57,067 per capita.The federal government, unlike the states, can print money and have the Federal Reserve purchase bonds from the Treasury and monetize the debt. This is instructive as a contrast between the federal and state governments.