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TN Has a Fiscal Slope Even Without a Fiscal Cliff

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While national attention is riveted on Washington’s walk toward a fiscal cliff and the various steps backward, forward and sideways along the path, the matter is receiving some Tennessee attention because of the potential ramifications for the state and local governments.
On the spending-cut side of the fiscal cliff, projections are that Tennessee’s immediate loss of direct federal funding would be fairly modest by governmental standards, about $100 million by most estimates.
The tax increase side of the cliff could have a more substantial, though less immediate, impact. The President’s Council of Economic Advisers calculates, for example, that the increased payment of federal income taxes would translate into about $4 billion less in retail spending by Tennesseans in a year.
A day before that estimate was sent to the media last week, Stan Chervin, a state Department of Revenue veteran who serves as a consultant on state tax matters, spoke to the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in general terms on how the cliff’s increase in federal income and payroll taxes — actually the elimination of current tax breaks — translates into less disposable income: “All those things are going to reduce take-home (money) if they go away, and that’s what we use to buy stuff. And that’s how we run the state.”

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Fiscal Cliff Tax Increases Could Cut TN Tax Take

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Estimates of the direct impact on state government if “fiscal cliff” spending cuts take effect is in the $100 million range insofar as initial loss of federal money goes. But a longer term and deeper impact could come from tax increases and their impact on state spending and, thus, sales tax collections.
That was part of the message Wednesday at a Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations meeting. Andy Sher has a report.
If federal officials don’t resolve the so-called fiscal cliff, the impact of tax hikes on consumer spending likely will hit sales-tax dependent states like Tennessee the hardest, a tax expert warned Wednesday.
Dr. Stan Chervin said that absent an agreement in Washington, D.C., the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts and newer payroll-tax reductions will leave Tennesseans with less cash in their pockets.
“So what are you going to do with less? You’re probably going to spend less,” Chervin said. “All those things are going to reduce take-home [money] if they go away, and that’s what we use to buy stuff. And that’s how we run the state.”
About 54 cents of each state tax dollar comes from the state sales tax, which is among the highest in the nation. Unlike most states, Tennessee has no broad-based income tax.
…Chervin said federal tax increases include boosts in capital gains rates from 15 percent to 20 percent, higher income tax rates and elimination of the 2 percent payroll tax reduction pushed by Obama. Add them all up and that’s less money for most, he said.
“If you just follow the dominoes, yeah, less take-home [money], less retail sales, less sales tax — boom, boom, boom,” Chervin later told reporters. “So it is kind of scary.”

Two Test Overseers Exit State Dept. of Education

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Department of Education is launching a nationwide search to replace two testing officials.
Department spokeswoman Kelli Gauthier said Monday that the executive service appointments of Dan Long and Stan Curtis ended last week.
She said an interim director has been appointed “to ensure the ongoing success of the department’s work in data and assessments.”
Long headed the Assessment, Evaluation and Research Division, which administers the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, achievement tests, and Curtis served as assistant director.
The departures come less than a month after the state asked the federal government for a waiver from the No Child Left Behind law, saying its revamped education standards should be appropriate for measuring schools.
Recent results show only about half of Tennessee’s schools have met the federal law’s standards.
UPDATE: Department officials wouldn’t tell Andrea Zelinski why the two men departed, but did say what the reason was n’t. Or something like that.
The state Department of Education says the resignation of two testing division officials is “completely separate” from a mistake the department made in downgrading two school districts four years ago.