As we noted, in 1990, Gilbert Hyatt was awarded the patent for the first single-chip microprocessor. This invention earned Hyatt a lot of money and he soon moved to Nevada, which has no state income tax. California’s Franchise Tax Board (FTB) claimed Hyatt lied about his residency, and that he owed millions in state…
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As we noted, California’s Board of Equalization has managed to misallocate nearly $50 million in tax revenue. BOE members have been spending public funds to promote themselves, staging useless events, and dishing out raises to high-salaried staff without performance reviews. The shabbily constructed BOE headquarters in Sacramento remains a safety threat and bottomless money…
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California maintains a state Board of Equalization that, contrary to its name, does not equalize anything. Board of Taxation would more accurate because the state body collects taxes, and as Adam Ashton notes in the Sacramento Bee, board members use some of the tax money they collect to promote themselves in their districts. In…
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As we noted in March, the Sacramento headquarters of the California State Board of Equalization, known among reporters as a “24-story money pit,” sprung two leaks during heavy rains. Floors 10 and 22 both had a history of leaks and other troubles, but these were apparently unaddressed, despite more than 20 reports calling for…
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Government waste abounds in California but is not always easy to spot. Veteran observer Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee suggests a hard look at “overlapping and utterly confusing governmental entities that cloud accountability.” His first example is the California Coastal Commission, by some accounts the most powerful land-use body in the nation, and…
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As we noted in 2014, the State Board of Equalization (BOE) headquarters in Sacramento has been dubbed the “Terror Tower,” with good reason. It has been plagued with invasive mold, leaking windows, burst pipes, unreliable elevators, falling glass and traces of toxic substances. Someone was looking the other way when this atrocity was built,…
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