A whore to special interests

The LA Times called out Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday for vetoing several bills that would have tried to collect taxes from businesses. It turns out the Governor, who pretends to care about balancing the California budget, isn't really very interested in half of the equation.

The most interesting veto concerned a bill that would have required Californians to pay state taxes owed under any judgment entered against them by the Internal Revenue Service. A recent court decision said the state couldn't collect taxes in some long-running cases, citing a four-year statute of limitations on tax violations. The state Franchise Tax Board was shocked by that decision, but heads really swiveled at the governor's veto of a bill to reinstate such collections. For a big company, the legal bills of a delaying action could easily be less than the tax liability.

Schwarzenegger's sympathy for businesses that "forget" their tax payments or game the tax code at the expense of the state budget is ludicrous. But the worst aspect of his vetoes is that they make honest taxpayers feel like chumps.