We retired Tax Justice Blog in April 2017. For new content on issues related to tax justice, go to www.justtaxesblog.org
May 29, 2012 7:32 PM
- Michigan lawmakers recently slashed income taxes for businesses by about $1.6 billion, and paid for it mostly with income tax hikes on the elderly and poor. Now lawmakers are debating a gimmicky income tax cut that would take effect about a month before voters head to the polls in November but do little to offset recent tax increases on the state’s working poor.
- Late last week, the Illinois House voted to raise the state’s cigarette tax. This is big news not only because the tax increase will help to fill a nearly $3 billion budget hole in the state’s Medicaid program, but because anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist was resoundingly defeated despite threats from his Illinois staffers that voting for the cigarette tax could “ruin the GOP brand in the state for a generation.”
- Question: Could the popularity of the no-new taxes pledge championed by Grover Norquist be waning? Answer: Yes. Read this.
- To understand how the regressive, multi-billion dollar tax cut bill signed into law last week in Kansas is being received, check out this news round up from the Wichita Eagle. A lot of people are “horrified.”