Kevin Kiley: “Currently, California businesses are facing a significant tax increase, thanks in part to a high-ranking State official…”

“Currently, California businesses are facing a significant tax increase, thanks in part to a high-ranking State official who allowed the tax dollars they had already paid to be stolen. It is an incompetence tax, a price private citizens are being forced to pay for their government's failures. I would like to take a moment to explain how this happened, but I will lead with the punch line: The State official who squandered these funds, allowing a fraud of historic proportions, is somehow now up for a major promotion. President Biden has nominated Julie Su, former head of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency, to be the next U.S. Secretary of Labor. The predicament that small businesses in California now find themselves in--facing double taxation to compensate for the government's singular negligence--is another example of why this nomination is so ill-considered. It is a warning as to what all Americans have in store if Julie Su is confirmed. Stepping back, the California Unemployment Insurance Fund is the source for paying out unemployment insurance claims honored by California's unemployment office, known as the EDD. The fund is ordinarily maintained through a tax levied on California businesses. New employers are assigned a 3.4 percent UI rate for 2 to 3 years. After that, a business' contribution tax varies. It is somewhere between 1.5 and 6.2 percent for the current year.…”