The tax refund withholding outrage

News have started to pour in that since some of the states are in dire straits due to the money crunch, they have been preserving cash to pay their bills by delaying the state tax refund due to their tax payers, which is really outrageous. I can understand that the states are in dire financial stress due to their own follies and due to the economy but why penalize the people who gave you extra money and just want to get it back from them when they really need it most. If they are planning to keep it to pay their other urgent bills how would they have coped when they had only received the exact amount of taxes they were owed. How would they have then paid for their urgent services?

And furthermore if people don’t pay taxes on time they are penalized by interest penalties but the state have the leeway of at least two months or so in which they don’t have to pay any taxes on the refund amount. Although I am not affected by the tax refund from the state (yet) but it is really starting to become annoying that why the states can’t anticipate their revenues and expenses and why they have to keep on promising people future money when they know that they will not have enough to pay them. I can’t believe it for a moment that with all the top economists and accountants and financial experts that they have that they can’t predict their cash inflows and cash disbursements. The states know that they can’t raise money by just printing and they have to balance their budgets by law so if they can start behaving like a responsible household for a while, it would be a big favor to their constituents and tax payers.