Author: tarek

In some states, huge budget gaps are making it somewhat difficult to enact the types of large, immediate tax cuts that many lawmakers promised during their political campaigns last year.  Partially as a result, anti-tax lawmakers are increasingly looking toward the longer-term with proposals to cap state spending, cap property tax growth, and mandate a supermajority legislative vote in order to raise taxes.  Four states in particular generated headlines for proposals of this sort over the past week: New York, Wisconsin, Virginia, and North Dakota.

As we mentioned two weeks ago, New York’s Republican-led Senate has already passed constitutional amendments that would impose a TABOR-style spending cap, and a supermajority requirement for raising taxes.  This week, the Senate added to that list by enthusiastically passing Governor Andrew Cuomo’s property tax cap, which would limit property tax growth to 2 percent per year.  As the New York Times pointed out, property tax caps in general are extremely blunt instruments, and this one is particularly worrisome given the lack of exemptions for things like health care, pensions, debt service, or increased enrollment.  Fortunately, all three of these proposals will be less welcome in the state Assembly, though the Assembly’s speaker has expressed an interest in coming to a “common ground with the governor and the Senate on an appropriate property tax cap.”

In Wisconsin, the state’s newly elected Republican governor and Republican legislators have enacted relatively minor business tax cuts that some lawmakers have described as merely symbolic.  Not content with these small victories, Republican lawmakers are now turning to the slightly longer-term, as the state Assembly last week passed a bill that would require a supermajority vote in order to raise taxes during the next two years.  Of much more concern, however, is a proposed constitutional amendment that would permanently impose the same restriction on Wisconsin residents’ elected representatives. That amendment has yet to come up for a vote.

In Virginia, two troubling constitutional amendments made it out of committee last week. One would mandate a supermajority vote to raise taxes and another would impose a TABOR spending cap equal to inflation plus population growth.  Both are being pushed by Del. Mark Cole, and both were the subject of a highly critical editorial in the Roanoke Times this week.

Finally, in North Dakota, a proposal to cap property tax revenue growth at 3 percent per year received a committee hearing this week and will eventually move to the full House for a vote.  Similar proposals have been rejected in each of the last two sessions, though the fate of this one remains unclear.

Hopefully, lawmakers in each of these states will eventually decide against reducing their ability to deal with the difficult and often unforeseen challenges that state and local governments must inevitably confront.

It looks very likely that the question of whether or not to extend a temporary income tax surcharge on New York’s wealthiest households will be a contentious issue as the budget process moves forward in the state.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo released his budget plan this week.  Sticking to his “no tax increase” campaign promise, Cuomo did not include any significant revenue-raisers and instead chose to close a $10 billion budget gap primarily with massive cuts to education and Medicaid spending.

As a New York Times editorial stated, “without additional revenue… the state’s most vulnerable citizens — the poor, the sick, the elderly and schoolchildren — will inevitably bear the largest burden.”  The editorial endorsed extending the temporary personal income tax surcharge on the state’s wealthiest households, a move also supported by Democratic Assembly members and many advocacy groups who want to lessen the magnitude of proposed spending cuts.  

The temporary high-income tax surcharge was enacted in 2009 to help address New York’s budget crisis at the time and is set to expire at the end of 2011.  But, clearly, the budget crisis is not behind the state and the $2 billion the temporary tax would raise for the coming fiscal year and $4 billion in the following year could go a long way to protecting core state services.  The surcharge applies only to married couples with taxable incomes over $300,000 a year ($200,000 for single taxpayers).  These very same taxpayers will receive a significant federal benefit from the extension of the Bush tax cuts. 

For the sake of ensuring all New Yorkers have access to affordable health care, quality education, and safe communities, let’s hope the state’s lawmakers can agree that their wealthiest residents can afford to pay a little more this year.

In a recent op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Sarah Beth Gehl of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute makes the case that the Special Council on Tax Reform and Fairness hit a triple when they came out with their policy recommendations for modernizing the state’s tax structure. The Council emphasized sales tax base expansion to include more services and broadening the state’s income tax base. 

Triples are good, but home runs are better and Gehl makes the case that the Council missed out on a homerun because they overlooked a key tax policy principle when devising its recommendations — tax fairness.  Citing ITEP data, she writes, “The best-off 1 percent of Georgians, those making more than $389,000 in 2010, would receive an almost $7,800 average yearly tax decrease. In the case of a Georgian making around $40,000, taxes would rise by about $400 a year.” 

Gehl identifies several sensible alternatives that the legislature could tack onto the Council’s recommendations that would take into account tax fairness, including more generous low-income tax relief and exempting groceries from the sales tax base.

There seems to be a contingent that is steering away from the debate and instead focusing on what Grover Norquist would approve of. In fact, to appease Norquist and his group, Americans for Tax Reform, the Council actually reconvened earlier this week to vote on a resolution which claimed that the intent of the Council’s recommendations was that they were to be “revenue-neutral.” Because, of course, Norquist’s group would never give the thumbs up to a proposal that actually raised revenue to meet the needs of Georgians.

The Special Joint Committee on Georgia Revenue Structure met this week to debate the Council’s recommendations. We’ll be watching their actions closely and it sounds like Grover will be too.

Low-income tax credits and rebates are one of the most effective ways that lawmakers can reduce poverty through the tax code. The proliferation of state Earned Income Tax Credits attests to policymakers’ growing awareness of this. But these rebates can be meaningless if lawmakers don’t make at least minimal outreach efforts to ensure that eligible taxpayers claim the credits.

Case in point: South Dakota, where last week the House Taxation Committee met to consider HB 1131, a bill that would have eliminated the state’s sales tax on food and replaced the lost revenue by increasing the sales tax rate on other items.

Data generated by ITEP and presented in testimony by the South Dakota Budget and Policy Project showed that this revenue-neutral tax change would actually result in a tax cut for 99 percent of South Dakotans. Yet, the bill was defeated in committee.

Certainly, the debate about whether or not to tax food is worth having. It’s important to note that in states that tax food, most offer some type of low-income tax relief to help offset the regressive nature of sales taxes levied on necessities. South Dakota offers a rebate, but it’s ineffective at best. The current rebate was only claimed by 726 families in all of fiscal year 2010. Qualifying for the program is difficult and there’s little effort by the state to even make sure families know about the refund.

Maddeningly, some of the lawmakers who rejected HB 1121 cited the existence of the rebate as a reason why a grocery tax cut is unnecessary. South Dakota’s tax structure is plenty flawed already (it’s a state that doesn’t levy an income tax) and taxing food without offering an effective refund simply doesn’t help.

Some Americans respond positively to the anti-tax message of the Tea Party, but is anyone willing to accept the cuts in public services that must logically follow? The Tea Party has been specific about cutting taxes but vague about what programs must be slashed in order to balance the government’s books. So what will happen if the Tea Party takes power? The recent experience of Nassau County, New York, shows us that the result will be a disaster.

When Tea Party-backed Edward Mangano won his election for the Nassau County Executive as a member of the Tax Revolt Party, it was on a platform of vague promises to cut spending and to repeal a $40 million dollar energy tax.

The voters of Nassau County got what they asked for. Mangano immediately repealed the energy tax, but failed to actually pass any of the substantial spending cuts that he had promised. In doing so, he may have stayed true to his Tea Party roots, but he also drove the second richest county in the nation into fiscal disaster.

With a $175 million dollar gap in the $2.6 billion budget plan, the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority (NIFA), a New York State oversight board, was forced to take control of the county’s finances. NIFA is tasked with stepping in to correct the county’s finances whenever there is a gap of larger than 1 percent, which the current gap dwarfs by almost 7 times.

The situation is so dire that Moody’s is putting the county’s municipal securities on watch for a downgrade, a move that portfolio managers said is rare considering how safe these investments are usually considered.

Despite this, Mangano has refused to yield and in recent days filed suit to stop the takeover, citing his worries that NIFA may force him to raise taxes.

The consensus against Mangano even transcends normal ideological lines, with the New York Times and New York Post editorial pages finding themselves in rare agreement over the irresponsibility of his actions.

In a comprehensive special report, Reuter’s called Nassau County’s experience a “cautionary tale,” saying that the fiscal collapse in Nassau and the subsequent takeover represents a “black eye for the Tea Party.”

As one observer put it, “A lot of people who got elected on this type of anti-tax platform are running into the brick wall of fiscal reality.”

A new website, Oregon Open for Business, was launched this week to help dismiss claims that Oregon’s recent voter-approved tax increases are driving corporations away from the state.  The website tracks the numerous businesses, including Google, Facebook, Genentech, IBM and Subaru, that have moved to or expanded their presence in Oregon in the past year.

The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center and Keystone Research Center introduced a  joint blog this week called Third and State.  The new progressive blog will present “sharp and timely commentary” on Pennsylvania’s economy and help explain how the state budget and other policies impact the lives of Pennsylvanians.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and Citizens for Tax Justice are seeking an experienced and mission-driven Communications Director to help us articulate and amplify our voice on federal and state tax issues.  The CTJ/ITEP Communications Director will develop and implement a communications strategy that will deliver regular and consistent messages to the media, lawmakers, national and state partners, and the community at large across a wide range of media.   Interested candidates should send a cover letter and resume to Matt Gardner at mattg@itepnet.org.

During his State of the Union Address last week, President Obama called on Congress to “get rid of the loopholes” in the corporate tax and “use the savings to lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years — without adding to our deficit.”

If the President means that all of the revenue raised by closing tax loopholes should be used to pay for a reduction in the corporate tax rate, then this is the wrong approach.

A report released earlier that day by Citizens for Tax Justice explains several reasons why corporate tax reform should be revenue-positive, not revenue-neutral. Despite what corporate CEO’s and many politicians claim, U.S. corporate taxes are already lower than the corporate taxes imposed by the countries that we compete with. Surveys show that most Americans want large corporations to pay more, not less, in taxes. The arguments lobbyists make to try to justify reducing U.S. corporate taxes — arguments related to “competitiveness” and alleged “double-taxation” of corporate income — don’t add up. The last major corporate tax reform, which was enacted under President Ronald Reagan at a time when corporate loopholes were out of control, as they are again today, resulted in a 34 percent net corporate tax increase.

House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan gave the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address, speaking at length about what he sees as the need for greater cuts in government spending.

Anyone interested in learning what sorts of changes Congressman Ryan has in mind can look to the detailed “Roadmap for America’s Future” that he proposed last year.

Ryan’s “Roadmap” would reduce Social Security benefits and partially privatize the program, replace Medicare and Medicaid with gradually declining subsidies for private health insurance, and dramatically slash other types of non-military spending.

CTJ’s report on the tax proposals in Ryan’s “Roadmap” found that they would raise taxes on average for the bottom 90 percent of taxpayers, slash taxes on average for the richest 10 percent of taxpayers, and lose $2 trillion over a decade.

Governors are in the midst of crafting their budget proposals for next year, and many state leaders continue to grapple with historic budget shortfalls due to lagging revenue recovery and a high demand for public services.  In 2009 and 2010, most states balanced their budgets with a mix of temporary and permanent tax increases, significant federal assistance, and spending cuts.  This year, state revenues continue to lag, many of the temporary tax increases are set to expire, and federal stimulus assistance will dry up, yet the need for quality education, safe communities, affordable health care, public transit and well-maintained roads has not diminished.

As the Tax Justice Digest has previously noted, so far this year we have seen mostly a slew of bad proposals from state leaders. Many states are offering tax breaks to corporations and wealthy households and refusing to consider new taxes, while choosing to cut state spending to historically low and damaging levels. A few governors, however, have recently bucked the cuts-only trend and have made it clear that taxes must be a part of the solution.
 
In Connecticut, newly elected Governor Dannel Malloy plans to address the state’s $3.7 billion budget shortfall with an almost equal share of spending cuts ($2 billion) and tax increases ($1.7 billion).   While the details of his tax plan will not be unveiled until February, he is likely to support eliminating a majority of the state’s sales tax exemptions as one part of his revenue raising plan.

Hawaii’s new governor, Neil Abercrombie, has also embraced the need to raise new revenues as part of a budget-fixing compromise.  Governor Abercrombie proposed raising $279 million, including taxes on soda, alcohol, and time-shares. Most significantly, Abercrombie would tax pension income (which is generally exempt from taxation currently) for taxpayers with incomes over $50,000, raising around $114 million a year.  He also supports eliminating the state deduction for state taxes, a smart reform measure that would raise $70 million a year.  

North Carolina lawmakers addressed their budget crisis in the previous two years in part with $1.3 billion in temporary taxes which are set to expire this year.  For months, Governor Bev Perdue opposed extending the taxes for another year despite a shortfall of nearly $4 billion.  She recently changed her tune, and is now considering including an extension of these temporary tax increases (a 1 cent sales tax increase and income tax surcharge on high-income households and corporations) in her budget proposal in order to stave off massive cuts to K-12 education.

In recent weeks, tax commissions in Georgia and Vermont issued reports recommending a major overhaul of their states’ tax systems.  The recommendations share many things in common, including sensible proposals to broaden the bases of major taxes and to make the changes revenue-neutral. In fact, when ITEP staff testified before each of these commissions over the last year, our testimony highlighted the importance of base-broadening as a first step towards sustainable tax reform. However, it’s clear that only one commission was concerned about the general welfare of its low-income taxpayers while the other seemed to have little interest in ensuring that a major tax overhaul doesn’t disproportionately impact working families.  

Georgia’s Special Council on Tax Reform Releases Recommendations

Earlier this month Georgia’s Special Council on Tax Reform released its recommendations for how Georgia’s tax structure should be changed. CTJ has been following the Council’s work closely over the past few months.  

As anticipated, the recommendations are quite sweeping and deal with every major tax the state levies.  Among the recommendations are broadening the income tax base by repealing the state’s generous pension exclusion and broadening the sales tax base by including more services and groceries. The Council also recommends replacing the state’s progressive income tax with a flat 4 percent rate, increasing the corporate income tax rate and increasing the cigarette tax. (Read the Council’s full recommendations.)

Unfortunately, no thought was given to how these sweeping changes impact low and middle-class working families. Broadening tax bases is sound tax policy, but base-broadening must be coupled with targeted measures to ensure that the brunt of this tax modernization isn’t borne by the most vulnerable.

Vermont’s Tax Commission Releases Final Report

On the heels of Georgia, Vermont’s Blue Ribbon Tax Structure Commission released its final report last week after more than a year of review, research, outreach and discussion about the state’s tax system.  The report offers a clear path forward for Vermont to “strengthen its tax system for the 21st century” which means “questioning critically every assumption in the tax system.” 

If enacted as a comprehensive package, which Commission members have requested lawmakers to consider, the recommendations would indeed make the state’s tax system more sustainable, adequate, and fair over the long run. 

The Public Assets Institute issued a statement on the report, saying it “was badly needed and long overdue…a  good first step in strengthening our revenue system so it can support the essential public services that all Vermonters deserve.”

The recommended income tax changes include basing Vermont’s taxes on federal adjusted gross income (AGI) and eliminating itemized and standard deductions.

The personal exemption would be replaced with a $350 non-refundable per-filer credit, plus an additional $150 for each spouse or dependent, which is capped at $800 and only available to taxpayers with AGI below $125,000.

The revenue gained from broadening the income tax base would be used to lower income tax rates.

The Commission recommended expanding the sales tax to most consumer-purchased services in order to bring their sales tax in line with current consumer patterns which favor services rather than goods.  They also suggested that all consumer-based sales tax exemptions should be eliminated with the exception of food and prescription drugs.  The revenue gained from broadening the sales tax base would be used to lower the sales tax rate from 6 percent to 4.5 percent.

Additionally, the Commission wants more scrutiny of the state’s tax expenditures and called for the state to develop the capacity to conduct tax incidence studies to better inform policymakers on tax policy changes.

One criticism of the Commission is that their recommendations were revenue-neutral, meaning the changes would not increase or decrease current state revenues.  Given that Vermont must fill a $150 million budget gap next fiscal year, some advocates and lawmakers have suggested that the plan should raise some new revenue, at least temporarily, to fill the gap. 

The good news, however, is that if taken as a comprehensive package, the recommended changes would maintain the state’s reliance on a progressive income tax and would use revenue gained from broadening the sales tax base to lower the sales tax rate rather than moving to a greater reliance on consumption-based taxes.

Commission members asked state leaders to give serious consideration to their findings and recommendations. There is a good chance their request will be answered, because Vermont policymakers are making tax reform a priority during this legislative session.