Category: Taxes
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Analysis: Only Assembly Can Impose Carbon Tax
By Steve Haner It is illegal in Virginia for a petroleum wholesaler to arbitrarily reduce the amount of product it provides to retailers. The General Assembly has intervened in that marketplace, probably for the reasonable public purpose of preventing price gouging. Regulating the sale of fuel for some other purpose should also require action by…
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At Least Some Legislators Dream of Tax Fairness
By Steve Haner The new chair of the House Finance Committee has introduced a major long-term tax reform proposal that will help most Virginia families, and the former chair of the same committee has offered a significant improvement to it. Both are good bills and combined they are great tax policy. Delegate Vivian Watts, D-Fairfax,…
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Electoral College Vote, Carbon Tax, Labor’s Wants
By Steve Haner The End of the Electoral College Looms The legislature’s new ruling Democrats, having celebrated their adoption of the national Equal Rights Amendment, may continue their Constitutional aspirations next week and try to kill the federal Electoral College. Some believe the will of Virginia voters in choosing presidential electors should be overridden by…
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Be Careful What You Wish For
by Dick Hall-Sizemore For the participants on this blog who have longed for the lifting of the yoke of the Dillon Rule from the necks of local governments, major relief is in sight. However, you may not like the area in which it is being contemplated: taxation. Generally, Virginia counties have less authority than cities…
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No $220 Rebate Checks for Military Families?
By Steve Haner More than 400,000 Virginians failed to receive their $110 “Windfall Income Tax Rebate” in 2019 because, for perfectly valid and acceptable reasons, they didn’t file their returns by July 1. That allowed the Commonwealth of Virginia to hold onto $46 million more of the un-legislated state tax increase created by conforming to…
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Yet Another Tax Increase Proposal
Del. Delores McQuinn, D-Richmond, has submitted a bill, HB 1541, that would raise taxes in Central Virginia by 2.1% on wholesale fuels (about 7.6 cents per gallon of gasoline) and 0.7% on the sales and use tax to fund regional transportation projects. The taxes would raise an estimated $168 million a year. Fifty percent would…
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Virginia Death Tax Would Be Fairly Narrow
by Hans Bader A few days ago, I wrote about legislation to reinstate Virginia’s estate tax. The Tax Foundation has informed me that the tax contained in the bill would affect fewer households than in most of the states that still have an estate tax. (Most states no longer have an estate tax at all).…
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A Sure-Fire Formula for Chasing Away Affluent Retirees
by James A. Bacon Once upon a time, the Commonwealth had an “estate” tax (paid by the estate of a person upon his or her death) like many other states, but changes in federal law effectively repealed it in 2007. There has been no serious move to reinstate the tax in Virginia until this year.…
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2020 Assembly May Not Vote on Carbon Car Tax
By Steve Haner It now seems unlikely the 2020 General Assembly will act directly on Virginia’s membership in the proposed Transportation and Climate Initiative, an interstate compact to cap, tax and then start to ration fossil fuels that add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Virginia would be the southernmost member. While six pieces of pending…
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The 20% Growth Claim Is Not Misleading
HB 30 Appropriations Total As Introduced Year Grand Total ($Billions) % Over Previous % Over 2010 2010 77 2012 86 12 12 2014 97 13 26 2016 109 12 42 2018 116 7 51 2020 139 20 81 By Steve Haner As I noted earlier, defenders of state spending growth have a number of tools…
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Death Tax Proposed for Virginia
by Hans Bader Lawmakers in both houses of Virginia’s legislature have proposed an estate tax. That’s a tax on what residents own at the time of their death. The proposed tax, set at hefty rates not seen since the 1970s, would affect the inheritances of many middle-class people. Virginia had an estate tax until July…
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A 20% Budget Explosion That May Keep Growing
By Steve Haner The interesting thing is not how Virginia’s overall budget has grown 20% in just two years (seen that number reported anywhere else?) What’s interesting is how many interest groups are openly pushing to make it even larger. The $23 billion increase is not enough! Just two years ago, in December 2017, Governor…
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The Wildest Energy Whirlwind Ever is Underway
by Steve Haner If Bacon’s Rebellion at times has been “Dominion Pravda,” providing a window into that corporate giant’s C suite, our friends at the Virginia Mercury sometimes take the opposite role of “Environmental People’s Daily.” Its story today is a good example, for what it includes and what it does not. The long, detailed…
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After Santa Comes Carbon Tax Sugar Daddy
by Steve Haner The Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources will be the sugar daddy for the carbon tax dollars raised from electricity customers, according to pending legislation to fully enroll Virginia in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) next year. House Bill 20, sponsored by Norfolk Democrat Joe Lindsey, is similar (with some changes) to…
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The Carbon Car Tax Nobody Is Discussing
By Steve Haner So far there appear to be about six schemes before the 2020 General Assembly to save the Earth and its inhabitants from the fiery holocaust of climate catastrophe. The one that is going to cost you the most money in the shortest period of time is still missing in action. Finally we…