David Gamage

David Gamage Expects California’s Fiscal Mess to Worsen

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.”

David Gamage Explains Dispute Over Online Sales Tax

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.”

Christopher Edley and David Gamage Discuss Treasury Fellowship

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.”

David Gamage Comments on $9.4 Million Judgment Against San Juan

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.”

David Gamage Addresses Social Security Fund Shortage

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.

David Gamage Laments State Lawmakers’ Rejection of Proposed Tax Reforms

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.”