Category: Taxes
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Troubled Governance at Sentara
by James C. Sherlock I have been studying and writing about Sentara Healthcare for 15 years. Sentara has during that time both expanded significantly and been mired in seemingly endless controversies regarding such widely reported issues as: its death grip on the COPN process and business practices, which together have strangled their much weaker competitors…
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Surprise! State Underestimated Carbon Tax Cost
by Steve Haner Virginia has collected its first wave of carbon taxes from the state’s electricity generators, costs which will eventually show up on future bills. The $43.6 million take just about doubles the revenue estimates used when participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative was being approved by the Virginia General Assembly last year.…
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Virginia’s Progressive Assembly Turns to Taxes
by Steve Haner First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. The COVID-19 recession barely dented Virginia’s state budget. The massive spending growth adopted in the pre-COVID budget a year ago is largely back on track. Yet some legislators think the time is ripe to hunt for more revenue by re-writing…
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Updates: PPP, PIPP, Dominion’s School Buses
by Steve Haner Tax on Paycheck Protection Program Grants The General Assembly session deadlines require final decisions on various revenue bills before the final budget bill is adopted, in theory keeping the two issues separate. What is good tax policy should not be driven by the need or greed of the appropriators.
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Should Virginia Rebuff the HUF?
by Bill Tracy There’s a new Virginia tax called a HUF — for Highway Use Fee. Who knew? Not me — until I had to pay it. If you renew your Virginia vehicle registration, and your car exceeds a 25 miles-per-gallon EPA rating, you will be politely advised that you are underpaying pump taxes, and…
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Dominion Electric Bus Scheme Back, With More
by Steve Haner First published this morning by Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. The ultimate goal of the Transportation and Climate Initiative with its tax and rationing scheme is to eliminate fossil fuels for transportation and get us into electric vehicles. That is something advocates have admitted and critics have pointed out. While Virginia…
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Senate Taxes Less PPP, House Bill Almost All
by Steve Haner First published this yesterday by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Majorities in both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly agree with Governor Ralph Northam and have voted to tax the federal Payroll Protection Plan grants that saved Virginia jobs in the pandemic. They only remain at odds over how much…
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Federal COVID Funding to Virginia K-12 Schools
by James C. Sherlock The federal government allocated a great deal of money in each of two different pieces of legislation in 2020 to provide COVID-related relief to K-12 schools. I will endeavor here to explain briefly what that means to Virginia. The two pieces of 2020 federal legislation that provide funding to K-12 schools…
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State Tax on PPP Grants Reduced Only Slightly
by Steve Haner A Senate Committee voted today to reduce the amount of tax that Virginia will impose on the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) grants that saved Virginia jobs, but not by much. It remains clear many legislators think employers owe Virginia tax on those dollars. Declining to tax the entire amount is being packaged…
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PPP Tax May Focus on Larger Employers Only
by Steve Haner A week ago, Governor Ralph Northam’s Administration was adamant that it would be unfair, in fact a double tax benefit, to allow Virginia employers with forgiven Paycheck Protection Plan loans to also deduct any expenses used to qualify for forgiveness. This week, the position changed. Maybe it would make sense to allow it…
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Taxing the Money That Saved Virginia Jobs
By Steve Haner Concern that Virginia is seeking to tax federal pandemic relief grants to Virginia businesses – grants which kept Virginians employed — is putting a normally routine tax administration bill in jeopardy. The House Finance Committee on Monday approved the annual bill to bring Virginia tax law into conformity with the Internal Revenue…
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Northam Again Targets Virginia Business Taxpayers
By Steve Haner Washington giveth and Richmond taketh away. Once again, the Northam Administration wants Virginia to ignore business income tax changes made at the federal level because they would lower state revenue. Governor Ralph Northam’s finance secretary was in front of the House Appropriations Committee Friday explaining the reasoning and complaining that new federal…
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Virginia’s COVID Federal Grants Now At $5.8 Billion
By Steve Haner Having received and mostly spent $3.1 billion in federal COVID-19 “relief” funding already, Virginia’s state and local governments now will have another $2.7 billion in the fourth and latest (but likely not last) federal spending bill tied to the ongoing pandemic and unemployment crisis. The word relief is in apostrophes because Virginia’s state budget,…
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CO2 Taxes, Gas Rationing Poll Badly With Voters
By Steve Haner The Transportation and Climate Initiative plan to tax and ration motor fuels suffered a major setback just before Christmas, when eight of the eleven states considering it decided not to move forward in 2021. Less than two weeks earlier, advocates had released polling that claimed to show overwhelming popularity for the idea.
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Tufts Study Projects Major TCI Carbon Taxes
By Steve Haner Monday the organizers of the Transportation and Climate Initiative, a carbon tax and rationing regime for Virginia motor fuels, will be announcing details of the underlying interstate compact, according to media reports. The media in Virginia has been disinterested in the issue, but the debate is raging in New England. The Boston…