We, The Taxpayers
California’s arcane system of state and local taxes hits every household differently. To gauge the bite, The Times asked a cross-section of Southern California residents to pull out their tax returns and talk about the system. To make it easier to compare these tax bills to your own, the stories are color-coded with the charts shown here, which provide several measures of tax bite and after-tax wealth.
Income Groups Defined: Using Franchise Tax Board data for 1970, 1980 and 1990, The Times divided tax-paying households by income into five groups of equal size. In 1990, the groups were defined this way:
CRAIG AND VEYOUN THOMPSON: Upper (Top 20% of earners) $50,001 and Over
AGES: 39 and 34
WHERE: Lancaster
JOBS: Insurance agent, claims adjuster
1992 INCOME: $56,000
1992 STATE AND LOCAL TAXES: $2,412
VIEWPOINT: “I’m about to die every time I go to the store to pay for something. You go . . . to buy something and you have barely enough money . . . and then there’s tax on top of that.”--Veyoun Thompson
Craig and Veyoun Thompson don’t mind paying their dues to maintain their perch in the middle class.
For Veyoun, that includes getting up at 3 a.m. to catch a bus to her job in Redondo Beach. For Craig, it means driving an average of 1,000 miles a week around a sales territory that includes much of Los Angeles County.
But they have mixed feelings about paying the taxes that come with the middle-class life.
Last year, the Thompsons moved from Lawndale to a new four-bedroom, 2,100-square-foot home in east Lancaster with a large back yard where their children--Malana, 6, and Courtlin, 2--play. They loved the $135,000 price tag, but were shocked by the property tax bill: $1,700 a year.
“I think it’s kind of unfair, . . . because I don’t see where it is helping the school system,” Veyoun says, noting the crowded classrooms in local schools.
As they decorate and furnish their home, sales taxes are another gripe--”a killer,” says Craig--though the family is frugal.
They buy few clothes, and Veyoun gets up early Saturdays to cook and freeze meals for the week ahead. Craig drives the two family cars on a tight schedule, splitting his driving for work so each vehicle will last longer.
Veyoun says the rich already pay their fair share of taxes. “If we go and get more education and make more money, should we pay more?” she asks. “I don’t think so.” And the poor do not deserve further tax breaks: “I feel like everybody ought to pay proportionally.”
But Craig disagrees, favoring more progressiveness in taxes: “You can’t have the same across-the-board tax on everybody,” he says.
WHAT THEY PAID:
State income tax: $614
1992 Property tax: $850
Estimated sales tax: $948
State and Local Taxes as a Percentage of Income: 4.3%
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Data analysis by Richard O’Reilly, Times directoy of computer analysis, and Times researcher Nona Yates from Franchise Tax Board, California Department of Finance and State Board of Equalization data.
