SF Weekly, January 4, 2012 by Joe Eskenazi
http://bit.ly/yd8DKt

“A bumper sticker popular when Prop. 13 was enacted said ‘Bring Back the Corrupt Assessors,’” says U.C. Berkeley law professor David Gamage. Assessors had attempted to “modernize, rationalize, and make effective assessment laws. But, on an individual basis, voters don’t like having property taxes enforced in a rational, effective manner.”

State Tax Notes, December 21, 2011 by David Gamage and Darien Shanske
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1974886

Our key analytical observation is that TILs insert two conceptually vacuous notions ­ ‘tax’ and ‘increase’ ­ into the fiscal constitutions of the states that have them. It is at least in part because this combination is incoherent that TILs do not work.

State Tax Notes, November 28, 2011 by Karen Setze
www.taxanalysts.com (registration required; go to H:\Law School in the News\In the News 2011\News Clips for article)

“States are allowed to tax remote sellers as long as the burden is no greater than on in-state vendors,” he said.

Star-Telegram, October 8, 2011 by Aman Batheja
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/10/08/3430436/legislature-still-using-gimmicks.html

“Every state uses a number of less than perfectly transparent or gimmicky tools to balance their budgets,” said David Gamage, an assistant professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies public finance and taxes.

East Bay Express, July 27, 2011 by Darwin BondGraham
http://bit.ly/mVBB30

“Without major reforms to either California’s tax base structure or to the state’s fiscal constitution, we should expect repeated budget crises over the coming decades,” wrote Gamage in a 2008 collection of academic articles about Prop 13. “If current trends continue, these budget crises are likely to become increasingly severe. Californians may end up looking back on their current budget troubles with nostalgia.”

American Public Media, Marketplace Tech Report, July 19, 2011 by John Moe
http://bit.ly/pk77W6

“If Amazon.com doesn’t have to charge a sales tax and Barnes & Noble does … than it becomes much cheaper for you as a consumer to purchase from Amazon, and Amazon has a significant price advantage. That’s partly why you see Barnes & Noble, Walmart, and lots of other big retailers that have physical locations sponsoring and trying to campaign for legislation to make sure that Amazon and other exclusively online retailers would be taxed.”

Your Call Radio, October 25, 2010 Host Rose Aguilar
http://yourcallradio.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-should-we-fix-californias-taxation.html

“With changes in the worldwide economy, most economists think the share of the corporate tax burden falling on investors has fallen over time; and the share that falls on consumers through higher prices and workers through lower wages has been rising over time.”

The Daily Californian, October 3, 2010 by Nina Brown
http://bit.ly/aW1929

“He will be one of the principal architects of tax policy positions taken by the Treasury Department and the executive branch, especially regarding the personal income tax,” said Christopher Edley, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

“It’s an exciting opportunity to work on important issues,” Gamage said. “Particularly with the health care reform legislation, this is a unique opportunity to work on tax regulatory problems.”

The Orange County Register, September 28, 2010 by Vik Jolly
http://www.ocregister.com/news/city-268495-cities-insurance.html

San Juan, which has a roughly $22 million general fund budget, would be hard pressed in these economic times to raise revenue, said David Gamage, assistant professor of law at UC Berkeley. “Raising additional revenues is never easy in California,” he said. “Most cities already have troubling budget situations and revenues already have gone down,” Gamage said. “For many cities, the spending obligations have gone up.”

KPCC, Southern California Public Radio, July 15, 2010 Host Larry Mantle
http://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2010/07/15/happy-birthday-social-security-near-retirees-keep-/

The overall federal budget is unsustainable by almost all projections. Social security is the single largest budget item. Essentially you can think of the federal budget as being social security, medicare, the military, interest payments on the debt, and a little bit of other stuff. You could cut everything else but those items, and, over the medium term, those budgets are still not sustainable.

San Francisco Chronicle, January 6, 2010 by Wyatt Buchanan
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/06/BATA1BDI6U.DTL&type=printable

David Gamage, an assistant professor of law at UC Berkeley, said job creation is a euphemism for tax cuts for certain industries. He cast doubt on the effectiveness of that strategy. He said it is “difficult to find support for the notion” that targeted tax cuts spur job growth.

San Francisco Chronicle, December 23, 2009 by Andrew S. Ross
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/23/BU0E1B7OVH.DTL

“I tried to get them (the Assembly committee) to focus on noncontroversial reforms like making the rainy-day fund more robust,” said David Gamage, a tax and public finance expert at UC Berkeley who advised tax commission members and testified before the committee. “I tried to suggest the baby not get thrown out with bathwater. But it all got lost.”

St. Petersburg Times, November 11, 2009 by Aaron Sharockman
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/gov-charlie-crists-claim-of-biggest-tax-cut-doesnt-add-up/1050870

“Even if this policy hadn’t been enacted, the future would look different than today,” Gamage said.

The California Report, September 18, 2009 Host Scott Shafer
http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R909181630/a

The business net receipts tax is a way to implement something like a value-added tax at the state level. Nothing quite like this has ever been tried before. So this is a novel tax instrument relying on advances in economic theory, but it has some characteristics that are similar to sales taxes—it’s a consumption tax—and some characteristics similar to business-income taxes. It can be viewed as a hybrid between a business-income tax and a sales tax.

The Oakland Tribune, July 25, 2009 by Josh Richman
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_12914491

“It has some flavor of raising taxes without actually raising taxes,” agreed David Gamage, a tax law expert and associate professor at University of California-Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. “It may be the most obvious impact for some taxpayers because you actually see the money coming out of your paycheck, but in the context where there are only bad (state budget) options, I don’t think this is going to strike anybody as the worst option.”

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, July 2, 2009 Host Marijke Peters
http://www.rnw.nl/ar/node/9585

Imagine that a business runs out of money, but still has a bunch of debts. It goes bankrupt. States can’t go bankrupt, so some bills just end up not being paid…. It’s widely agreed that California’s budgeting process is dysfunctional. The combination of the two-thirds majority rules to pass budgets and two political parties that vehemently disagree on taxes and spending, repeatedly create paralysis.

KQED-FM, Forum with Michael Krasny, June 10, 2009 Host Michael Krasny
http://www.kqed org/epArchive/R906100900

“The city’s contracts are potentially all up in the air. More or less everything the city does is reviewable by a bankruptcy judge in a bankruptcy court. The bankruptcy court can tear up contracts that otherwise the city couldn’t alter—and force the city to restructure its finances in ways that the political leaders wouldn’t necessarily approve. In fact, the last thing any entity, public or private, wants to happen is for lots of talk to be out there about bankruptcy without bankruptcy actually happening, because you get all the costs without any of the potential benefits.”

San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 2009 by Marisa Lagos
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/05/MNJ0180DCU.DTL

UC Berkeley assistant law professor David Gamage said cases such as this one are not as clear cut as both sides would like. “I would say an inquiry like this is very fact intensive,” he said. “The law recognizes that taxpayers have the right to organize their affairs to minimize their taxes, but only within the bounds of what is legal.”

KTVU News, April 26, 2009 by Diane Guerrazzi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXTjbd0-n5c

“It’s most important long term aspect is it significantly improves California’s rainy day fund, our budget stabilization fund. What 1A requires the state to do is save more of the extra revenues that the state generates during good economic times. The idea is to give the government more flexibility to deal with downturns.”

SF Weekly, January 14, 2009 by Peter Jamison
http://www.sfweekly.com/content/printVersion/1306440

“The literature is fairly robust on this: A large number of the people don’t switch,” said David Gamage, an expert in consumer issues and assistant law professor…. “Whatever the default option is becomes the default.”