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February 2, 2012 1:01 PM
- Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s (ITEP) Executive Director, Matthew Gardner, carried the torch for progressive corporate income tax reform in New York during his visit to Albany this week. He briefed legislative staff and the press on ITEP’s recent report, Corporate Tax Dodging in the Fifty States, 2008-2010, which found that twenty profitable Fortune 500 companies paid no state corporate income taxes over the last three years, and 68 paid none in at least one of those three years.
- The Michigan League for Health and Human Services reminds Michiganders about the upcoming $1.6 billion in tax cuts for businesses that will be made up by raising taxes on low- and middle-income families and retirees. The League (with some help from ITEP) found that the poorest Michigan families will be hurt substantially by the upcoming changes compared to better-off taxpayers.
- New Hampshire Governor John Lynch is urging the legislature to restore the cigarette tax to $1.78. The Governor said in his State of the State address, “The cut in the tobacco tax was nonsensical. That money would have been better spent in our community college and university systems, for example.” One legislator called the legislature’s ten cent cut in the tax last year a giveaway to out-of-state tobacco companies.
- Last year, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker proposed, and the legislature approved, freezing the state’s homestead property tax exemption. The Wisconsin Budget Project released a report this week showing that because the tax credit will no longer keep up with inflation, “working families and the elderly will be hit with a $14 million property tax increase over the next two years, and see their taxes continue to rise in later years.”
- Republicans in the Minnesota Senate are pushing a plan that would completely eliminate the state’s business property taxes and leave a “more than $800 million dollar hole in the general fund.” Democrats are fighting back, saying the bill will boost Wal Mart’s bottom line but won’t create any jobs.