Category: Taxes
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Surplus? How About $455 Million Windfall Tax Hike
by Steve Haner Virginia ended the last fiscal year with about $797 million more in revenue than projected, and the Northam Administration credits $455 million of that to higher taxes on about 30% of taxpayers caused by conforming to the new federal tax law. More than 700,000 tax returns stopped claiming state itemized deductions, accounting…
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Court Backs Little Debbie In Tax Dispute
Don’t underestimate Little Debbie – the spunky tyke took on the Augusta County tax collectors and won. But the county still has her money. The Virginia Supreme Court has sided with manufacturer McKee Foods Corporation, which makes the Little Debbie snack products, in a dispute over the tax assessment on its 828,000-square-foot factory in Augusta…
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No Appeal Filed on RGGI Regulation, Now In Force
Virginia’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is now fully authorized under a new state regulation, and the deadline to appeal that regulation has now passed with no appeal filed. The text of the regulation is here. Language inserted by General Assembly Republicans into the current state budget merely puts RGGI membership and…
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Virginia Tax On Racinos Among Lowest in U.S.
If Virginia is going to sell its soul, we should at least get the market price. The Virginia Racing Commission is starting to publish monthly reports on the cash flow to Colonial Downs and to the government under the new state-granted monopoly to operate gambling dens. Any relationship to horse racing in these establishments is…
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Pollution Control Tax Break Not An Incentive
Not every tax policy decision should be made or measured on whether it stimulates more economic activity and thus more taxable revenue for the government. There are things the government should not tax. Yet, returning once again to the well-thumbed June report on manufacturing incentives produced by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, that…
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Weldon Cooper Revisited
In a recent post of Steve’s, members of this blog got into an extended discussion of the methodology used by the Weldon Cooper Center at UVa. to evaluate the effect of tax incentives, specifically its projecting the “impact of raising income taxes by the amount exempted.” As promised, I contacted a senior executive at…
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Federal Tax Conformity Flooding State With Cash
What will you do with your $110? Thanks to the conformity revenue flood, it’s coming. Checks are expected to arrive in October for most Virginia taxpayers, the most important piece of campaign mail they’ll get before November’s election. The $110 extra refund, $220 for a married couple, is the General Assembly’s response to the huge…
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Comrades: Check Out Virginia’s Planned Economy!
There are portions of the recent state audit report on economic incentives that would warm the hearts of retired Soviet planned economy apparatchiks, sitting around their dachas dreaming of the good old days. Case in point: The analysis concluding Virginia’s use of a single sales factor method to tax manufacturers is “moderately effective.”
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JLARC: Semiconductor Grants Have Not Succeeded
The recent report from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission on economic incentives related to manufacturing (here) goes far beyond a discussion of data centers, and if the General Assembly accepts it as gospel some of the existing incentives might be in jeopardy. Two programs aimed at environmental goals should be eliminated, the staff…
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Tourist Storm Protection
According to a story in Saturday’s Virginian Pilot, Virginia Beach is slated for more beach widening this summer. The total cost of the project is $22.6 million, with the federal government providing $14.7 million (65 percent) and the city of Virginia Beach paying the remaining $7.9 million. The newspaper article says that this project is…
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Meet GOP Carbon Tax Advocate Bob Inglis
There is a hotbed of carbon tax advocacy at George Mason University, led by a former GOP congressman sent packing by South Carolina voters because he’s ready to tax them into loving solar and wind.
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U.S. Taxes Income, Europeans Tax Consumption
A reminder to all you Bernie Bros out there who think that the U.S. federal/state/local tax system is stacked far more in favor of the rich than in the social democracies in Europe. This graphic based on data from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which, incidentally, is not funded by the Koch…
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Medicaid: Report The Taxes Along With The Growth
Virginia makes is easy to track the growth of Medicaid enrollment since the decision a year ago to expand coverage but tracking the tax dollars behind the scenes is another matter. The new enrollment expansion dashboard on the Department of Medical Assistance Services website is updated every couple of weeks, with the April 4 report…
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Bacon Bits: I-81 Taxes, VCCS Shrinkage, Solar
The Numbers on Interstate 81: Tax First, Explain Later When you approve a major tax increase with amendments proposed just a few days before the General Assembly’s reconvened session, as happened last week, discussion is limited and there is almost no hard data on the financial impact available to the public. You tax first and…
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Bacon Bits: Highs and Lows
Digital gold rush. How lucrative are data centers for Loudoun County? The prosperous Northern Virginia county expects to collect $200 million in fiscal 2020 from the property tax on computer equipment, up 35% over 2019, according to the Washington Business Journal. Last week, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors adopted a $3.2 billion operating budget that…