In an interview with South Dakota Searchlight, as we approach the end of the primary election cycle, Gubernatorial wannabee Toby Doeden seems to have opened up on his ridiculous campaign promise on how he’s going to eliminate property taxes in South Dakota. Or at least claims to.
He’s going to tax the hell out of the trust and financial industry in South Dakota, and hold tourists upside down to empty their pockets with new taxes. But don’t take my word for it, here’s what Doeden had to say:
O’BRIEN: You’ve been on this platform of eliminating property taxes in the state. How exactly do you plan to do that? Do you have kind of a step by step, what is that process going to look like then, for your administration?
DOEDEN: Absolutely, it’s actually quite rudimentary and very simple, old school money management, which the Republican Party used to have as their platform. It seems as though the Republican leadership in the state is now more of a progressive Democratic platform, raise taxes, you know, raised our state’s budget, spend more money. I’m going to do the opposite.
and..
Number 2, there are external revenue sources that are just waiting to be harvested and collected by South Dakota. But the career politicians have never even attempted because they like internal revenue. Internal revenue is the money that you pay out of your paycheck. It’s the money that you pay in sales tax, it’s the money you pay when you register your vehicle. That’s internal tax. It comes from a resident of South Dakota. External revenue comes from non-South Dakota residents. We’re talking about targeted visitor consumption tax. We’re talking about for the first time in our state’s history, charging all the rich billionaires from around the world that are parking their money here in legacy trusts, charging them a small fee like every other state does. So I am going to bring in some new revenue that’s not going to come from the taxpayers. It’s called external revenue.
And…
So once the economy starts growing, and it will, once I start collecting external revenue, which we will, and once I cut all of the fat and pork out of our state budget, you are going to see very quickly, within a matter of a couple of years, a significant amount of annual budget surpluses. And yes, I will use that money to target the phase out of things like property tax, tax on things like groceries and other household necessities. We will make South Dakota affordable again. It’s not that complicated and it won’t take near as long as what the politicians are trying to convince people that it’s going to take.
Read that here, and more importantly, listen to the interview at SD Searchlight.
So, if I’m going to get out of the house and go to Deadwood for a weekend, everyone going there is going to be hit with enough in tourism taxes to eliminate property taxes in the state? That’s a pretty big fee on top of my hotel room.
And as for the financial/trust industry.. well, don’t have to worry about them parking money here anymore. They’ll immediately run for more friendly states.
Once again, nobody is proposing to solve ‘the property tax problem.’ Certainly not Toby. Just another tax-shift proposal which will end up hurting as many people who live in SD as it helps.
With the funds going to the central state government in Pierre to dictate how ‘this relief” is going to be handed out.
Doesn’t anybody understand how easy it is to move trusts around? If we increase the taxes they can move to Delaware or Nevada in 48 hours.
24 hours
Wyoming and Delaware salivating at the chance to scoop up every client of a South Dakota based trust company. If Dipshit Doeden wins, say bye bye to a few thousand high paying jobs and hello to a dead Downtown Sioux Falls and an even sadder Downtown Rapid.
I’m in downtown Rapid and Sioux Falls on a regular basis. I would put Rapid City downtown over Sioux Falls any day. Sioux Falls is far larger but not better.
Do you favor that Independent Ale House? grudznick likes it, but wishes it was a Republican Ale House.
The way you all savage Liz Cheney and prefer Trump tells me exactly what kind of good Republicans you all seem to actually be. Trump and how he operates, is not Republican. There’s a very different word for it.
Amen…dig deep in those pockets baby
He’s about to be a footnote in South Dakota election history, much like Stace Nelson and Dr. Boz. Twenty years from now most won’t remember he even ran. Those who do will chuckle.
Traffic on I-90 and I-29 will shift to i-80 and I-35 as the “tourists” driving big trucks decide to buy fuel and food along a different route. We’ve always been flyover country; with Doeden’s plan we will be drive-around country.
Naturally, the best sort of tax is the one someone else pays and I do not. However, that idea only goes so far.
Taxing the bejeebus out of trusts and/or tourism is probably not such a hot idea.
Trusts are not merely bank accounts that some crazy rich out-of-state families have parked in SD. It’s a bit more complicated than that. Yes, banks or other financial intuitions are involved, but so are SD attorneys, and private companies. Walk through a small office building in Sioux Falls like the 300 Building or 8th and Railroad. See those closed doors with a sign that says something like “XYZ, LLC.” Chances are that’s a private trust company established under SD law for some family worth 9 digits (or more). Trusts all employ people in SD and generate wealth that way. That work is here because some forward-thinking people saw a developing business opportunity and created an environment friendly to formation and maintenance of trusts. At the time, SD was a forerunner in getting these established. SD became a friendly environment for trusts in the same way Delaware became a good place to establish corporations.
Believe it or not, people who form these trusts are actually concerned about things like taxes. In fact, trust management for extremely wealthy people and families is largely a game of staying ahead of the IRS. Piling state-level taxes onto trusts in the name of somehow eliminating a tax burden on resident home-owners is extremely short sighted.
Taxing the hell out of tourism is likewise dumb. For starters, it is oblivious of the fact that South Dakotans are consumers of tourism in SD, too. I cannot think of a way to legally/constitutionally tax only non-residents at some astronomical rate as they tour around the Black Hills or pay for admission at the Corn Place, if that’s even a thing. So, yeah, you’ll be taxing South Dakotans, too.
But like the whole trust idea, there has to be a tipping point somewhere. South Dakota has somewhat unique tourist opportunities when it comes to the Black Hills, the Sturgis Rally, the Missouri River, and pheasant hunting. After that, things kind of taper off unless trying to visit every video lottery joint in the state is your idea of a good time. If you’ve ever traveled around the country for work or leisure, you’re probably familiar with places that are just plain expensive and part of that is tax burden.
The one that comes to mind for me right off the bat is San Francisco. ( I know. EEEEEK! Hippies! Gay people! Wokeness! California!) Also a really cool place and great food and wine. And expensive as all get out. Expensive enough to cause one to be very cost conscious which might mean going somewhere else, or finding other ways to economize- cheaper hotels, not going to certain restaurants, or whatever. And that kind of defeats the whole things.
Apparently we’ve already decided that we don’t want any new business opportunities. We loves our AI, but won’t have a building full of servers sitting anywhere. We loves renewable resources and turning corn into ethanol, but by golly we sure won’t connect any pipelines to it or to capture and move carbon dioxide. So, we may as well kill off or at least maim what we’ve got.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. If the Tobester spent as much time learning the actual challenges of governing this state and figuring out how to balance the state’s budgetary needs (not wants, needs) against the resources available as he spends shopping for snazzy vests, he might re-think the whole thing a bit.
“Taxing the bejeebus out of trusts and/or tourism is probably not such a hot idea.” Brilliant post!! Correct all the way!
Well, once we’ve run all our kids out of the state, because doing anything to create jobs appears to be labeled as “fake economic development” now, so our kids will all soon be out-of-staters and they can pay Toby’s taxes when they come back to visit their parents in nursing homes here. Oh wait, no healthcare workers to take care of the elderly because they all left? South Dakota’s elderly will have to go out of state to get care where the workers are, so they will also now be out-of-staters and can pay Toby’s tax too. Problem solved.
His plan is incredibly naive for a supposedly savvy businessman.
Tourism has already had a huge carve out from the Canadian boycott. That may not affect us as greatly as other parts of the US, but giving other states a huge reason to boycott South Dakota is idiotically stupid.
VOTER: we have “x” problem!
DOEDEN: I have a unique and magical solution!
VOTER: we love the magical solution! Do you have experience in doing this magic before?
DOEDEN: No!!! I DO NOT!!! Vote for me
Guys. Toby has no intention of doing any of this. Everything he says is just BS to get into power. If he gets there all of this will be forgotten.
I agree that he will never implement any of this if elected.
It is surprising though that he channels the mantra of the left though, “tax the rich billionaires” while claiming to be the conservative.
Why is that surprising? That is what the new far right always sounds like. Listen to Bernie and AOC talk about pipelines and data centers. You can’t tell if a quote came out of their mouths or Amanda Radke’s, Liz May, et al.
They are the real rinos.
You keep using that term, but I don’t think you know what it means.
I, for one, fully support charging more fees to the trusts holding hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.
Also shout out to Toby for using “Democratic” properly.
How about cutting all legislators salaries
As I heard a legislator from Lincoln County once say. If you pay them nothing only rich folks will try to get elected because no one else be able to afford to step away from their jobs and livelihoods to come to Pierre for 40+ days a year. Even a middle class retiree would have a hard time renting a hotel room that long. It isn’t like we pay them a lot. It amounts to a rounding error in the state budget.
Wow, – At about $15,000 a year per Legislator, you really sloced the problem there.
At least it’s a plan. That’s more than we’ve gotten out of Toby so far. But it doesn’t mean it’s a good plan.
Indeed. Mr. Chigorin said “Even a poor plan is better than no plan at all.”
A point .001% fee on the value of all trusts in SD would generate $900,000,000.
According to 2025 DOR annual report, owner occupied paid just over $814 million statewide in property taxes.
Why shouldn’t wealthy oligarchs who are shielding their assets here help out mom and pop South Dakota who are shouldering this increased cost burden?
I thought we could trust the trusts?
that .001% more than a couple other states would / will charge. They will leave and will be collecting .001% on $0…
Finally, Doedo is showing his true Democrat colors with his Bernie Sanders plan.
He and AOC should have a who wore it best contest when he breaks out his “kill the rich” dress.
Hey, let’s up taxes on agriculture, too, while we’re at it. What’s good for the golden goose is good for the golden gander, right?
I have to hand it to ol’ Toby… I didn’t think I could like his platform any less, but he has completely exceeded my expectations in that department.
Dodo using class warfare to win votes. That’s classic for a bloated rich guy who takes government handouts. Can’t wait for June 3rd so I don’t have to see any more of that fat a$$ on his postcards in my mailbox.
Groundbreaking. This has never been thought of or proposed before. So grateful Dumdum is here to rescue us.
Wow. Just wow. Doeden is too self-absorbed and unaware, he doesn’t realize he sounds exactly like every liberal that’s ever existed, “Look at all that money. Let’s tax it!”
And can we talk about how he puts Trump’s face on mailers and signs, but he’s never been endorsed??!!! Doeden is not the Trump candidate – like Trump or not. Doeden is just a bad choice.
“more friendly states” AKA a race to the bottom.