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Book Cover
E-book
Author Newman, Katherine S., 1953-

Title Taxing the poor : doing damage to the truly disadvantaged / Katherine S. Newman and Rourke L. O'Brien
Published Berkeley, Calif. : University of California Press, ©2011

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Description 1 online resource (xlviii, 212 pages) : illustrations
Series The Aaron Wildavsky forum for public policy ; 7
Aaron Wildavsky forum for public policy ; 7.
Contents The evolution of regional tax structures -- Barriers to change -- The geography of poverty -- Tax traps and how they spread beyond the South -- The bottom line
Summary This book looks at the way we tax the poor in the United States, particularly in the American South, where poor families are often subject to income taxes, and where regressive sales taxes apply even to food for home consumption. Katherine S. Newman and Rourke L. O'Brien argue that these policies contribute in unrecognized ways to poverty-related problems like obesity, early mortality, the high school dropout rates, teen pregnancy, and crime. They show how, decades before California's passage of Proposition 13, many southern states implemented legislation that makes it almost impossible to raise property or corporate taxes, a pattern now growing in the western states. Taxing the Poor demonstrates how sales taxes intended to replace the missing revenue -- taxes that at first glance appear fair -- actually punish the poor and exacerbate the very conditions that drove them into poverty in the first place
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-206) and index
Notes In English
Print version record
Subject Poor -- Taxation -- Southern States
Poor -- Taxation -- United States
Poverty -- Southern States
Poverty -- United States
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- International -- Taxation.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
Poor -- Taxation
Poverty
Southern States
United States
Form Electronic book
Author O'Brien, Rourke L., 1984-
ISBN 9780520948938
0520948939
0520269667
9780520269668
0520269675
9780520269675