The progressive/socialists in the legislature have just introduced H.510, an insanely expensive Vermont Child Tax Credit to grant $1,200 per child to parents making up to $400,000, and to adopt the incredibly complex federal advance payment scheme which has yet to experience its first tax season.
“We cut the rooms and meals tax to its lowest level in over a decade and yet we still sent even more money back to cities and towns,” Republican Gov. Chris Sununu said in a statement. “Instead of downshifting costs, we downshifted cash, giving cities and towns extra flexibility — a win for our citizens.”
Weeding out tax loopholes that unfairly benefit the wealthiest is worth doing, but destroying the angel investor and venture capital market is a notably bad idea.
The 2017 tax law passed under President Donald Trump capped deductions for state and local taxes paid at $10,000 per year through 2025. Since, state and federal politicians have worked to reinstate the deduction. The legislation would increase the cap to $80,000.
When Vermont’s Legislature appointed the Pension Benefits, Design, and Funding Task Force, there was a good chance tax increases would be discussed at some point. Now, Vermonters have a little clearer idea of what those could look like.
“We believe this program infringes on fundamental privacy rights, is costly for all involved, does not achieve the desired result, impacts nearly all Granite Staters with a bank account, and has the potential for unintended and serious negative consequences.”
If this is an attempt to get the wealthiest Americans to pay taxes they owe, why set the threshold for monitoring accounts at $600 or $10,000? Why not, say, $600,000? The latter is far less intrusive, far less widespread, and far more tailored to the actual problem.
Bernie, what percentage of the federal income tax collections from these highest income taxpayers would you consider their fair share, so you could quit demagoging the issue?
The Biden administration “is putting politics over progress and surrendering the fate of the U.S. economy to our foreign competitors, putting America at a serious disadvantage and making it better to be a foreign company or worker than an American one.”
The 10 states in the worst financial condition with the highest taxpayer burdens are Connecticut ($62,500), New Jersey ($58,300), Illinois ($57,000), Massachusetts ($38,100), Hawaii ($37,000), Delaware ($31,300), Kentucky ($26,000), Vermont ($24,700), California ($21,100) and New York ($20,100).
A two-year, $13.5 billion budget signed by Gov. Chris Sununu in June cut the state’s rooms and meals tax from 9% to 8.5 % – the lowest level in more than a decade. The tax reduction went into effect Sunday.
The stark reality is that our politicians in Vermont are already spending money well beyond our tax capacity. But the really scary thing is, they’re not done. Not by a long shot.