Category: Taxes
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Youngkin, Northam Tax Cuts Combine to $5 Billion
by Steve Haner In his final budget bill, departing Governor Ralph Northam (D) proposed a one-time rebate of just over $1 billion to Virginia income-tax payers, and additional policy proposals that would cut another $1.1 billion in state revenue for the remainder of this fiscal year and the next two. New Governor Glenn Youngkin (R)…
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A Regulatory Path to End the RGGI Carbon Tax
by Steve Haner First published today by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) will proceed to remove Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative carbon tax compact by the same route Virginia entered it: he will push to repeal the underlying regulation. As with much else in his promised “Day…
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For the Left, Government Is Always Underfunded
by Arthur G. Purves Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin has proposed several savings for Virginia’s taxpayers, including doubling the standard deduction, providing a one-time tax rebate, eliminating the grocery tax, and suspending the 10-cent increase in the gas tax. His proposals come at a time when Virginia has a record $2.6 billion budget surplus. Nevertheless, Virginia Public…
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Lame Duck Northam Tries to Piggyback on Youngkin’s Success
https://twitter.com/GovernorVA/status/1470782069500530692?s=20 by Kerry Dougherty Is this guy for real? Does Lame Duck Ralph Northam honestly believe that by Tweeting about the odious grocery tax with just 32 days left in his term he can somehow claim this populist issue for his own? Virginians can be thick sometimes — heck, they voted for Northam in 2017…
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Northam Blinks: State Tax Cuts Coming
by Steve Haner First published by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Virginia’s leaders are no longer debating whether to cut state taxes. The argument now will be over how to cut state taxes. Outgoing Democratic Governor Ralph Northam announced Tuesday that his final introduced budget will include $2.1 billion in lower taxes, created…
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Virginia No-Limit Campaign Laws = Tax Exemptions for Partners in Venture Capital Firms
by James C. Sherlock Updated Dec 14 at 10:19 AM I just spent some spare time browsing through the Virginia tax code. (I know, get a life.) Lots of interesting items in there. Some tax exemptions make sense for the best interests of the state. Some don’t. This case benefits a very few people a…
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Youngkin to Withdraw From RGGI, End Carbon Tax
By Steve Haner First published by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin told a business audience Wednesday afternoon that he intends to withdraw Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. His decision came two days after Dominion Energy Virginia filed a petition to increase the RGGI tax on its bills by…
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Inflation Disruption Watch: Property Tax Assessments
by James A. Bacon Inflation may be a national, even global, phenomenon, but many of its ramifications play out locally. When housing prices rise, so do real estate tax assessments and tax burdens. Inflation creates tensions in the labor market as workers demand pay raises to offset lost purchasing power. Higher wages push employees into…
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TCI is Now Dead. Happy to Have Helped.
by Steve Haner You’re welcome. Well, nobody is likely to thank me actually, but why not take a bow. After Connecticut’s governor announced he would give up on imposing the Transportation and Climate Initiative on his citizens, Massachusetts’ governor made a similar announcement yesterday. Governor Charlie Baker of that state was the driving force behind…
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Another Blue State Bails on Tax-and-Cap TCI, VA Democrats Dig In to Protect Their Green Revolution
by Steve Haner First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. The Governor of Connecticut has abandoned his efforts to enroll that state in the Transportation and Climate Initiative, an interstate compact which would impose a cap, tax and ration scheme on gasoline and diesel fuel. Virginia remains a part of…
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Buckle Your Seatbelts, HUFs and MBUFs Are Coming
by James A. Bacon For once, Virginia’s Virginia’s $8 billion-a-year surface transportation system (roads, highways, bridges, mass transit) is not in crisis. The system is in pretty good shape, and it is well financed, concludes a new Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) report. Recent tax increases bringing in more than $800 million a…
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JLARC Agrees: VA Economy Lags National Growth
by Steve Haner First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. This makes if official: Even the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) has documented and highlighted how poorly Virginia’s economy is performing, how far our state is lagging national growth averages. The admission comes in the most recent summary…
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The State Tax Gravy Train Accelerates
by Steve Haner First published today by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Any claim that Virginia cannot reduce taxes on its citizens without damaging state programs has been further eroded by two recent announcements. The explosion of revenue from recent state tax increases is continuing into this new fiscal year, pointing to a…
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Why Virginia Job Growth Lags Region, Nation
by Steve Haner “Virginia’s economic recovery continues to outpace the nation… Our unemployment rate remains well below the national average and has fallen consistently every month for the past fifteen months… I’m proud of our roaring economic growth…” So claimed Governor Ralph Northam (D) in a September 17 news release. It came just after Virginia’s…
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More Fun and Fraud with Numbers
by James A. Bacon Let me preface this post by stating unequivocally that eliminating Virginia’s personal income tax is a crazy idea — so crazy that no serious person has proposed it. The tax generates $16 billion a year in revenue, or 72.4% of Virginia’s General Fund expenditures. The loss of such a sum would…