notes-politics-stateTax

Currently, you have to do your taxes (fill out a tax form) for U.S. states as well as for the federal U.S. government. For example, if you live in California, you have to compute your taxes for California. This takes time and also takes California's time to enforce the rules.

I propose a simpler alternative: you must pay California a fixed proportion of your federal tax payment, unless you opt to apportion taxes among several states. For the sake of argument, let's say the proportion is 100%. So if you pay $1000 in federal taxes, you must also pay $1000 to California.

Apportioning among several states: let's say you are a business and you have most of your sales and operations in Nevada. You shouldn't have to pay California as much. So you get to compute what proportion of your business is in California and only pay that amount, times the fixed proportion times your federal taxes, to California.

Now you don't have to do California taxes, and California doesn't have to double-check them.