Taxation
Neil Downing reports that Governor Chafee’s proposed new 1% tax on various items would violate a multi-state agreement and could result in the loss of $1.8 million in revenue. However, since the new tax would generate $89 million (or $121 million, depends on who you ask), it’s no surprise that the Governor is still going…
Legislators and concerned citizens, be aware: taxophilic previous generations of Rhode Island lawmakers have written the minimum tax imposed on businesses into two separate places in the law. State law contains separate provisions for a “franchise tax” and a “minimum corporate income tax” and for many if not most Rhode Island corporations, both sections would…
U.S. News tells us that the IRS is ramping up because of the new health care reform plan (we’re all so surprised!): The Internal Revenue Service says it will need an battalion of 1,054 new auditors and staffers and new facilities at a cost to taxpayers of more than $359 million in fiscal 2012 just…
I feel compelled to clarify some of the misstatements made by reporter Gene Emery in a PolitiFact hit piece which gave me a rating of “Pants On Fire”. First off, when I first spoke with Mr. Emery, he stated that he became interested in the cost of illegal immigration after seeing a RIILE sign at…
Sen. Pichardo and Rep. Diaz have proposed to extend in-state college tuition rates to illegal immigrants. Let’s be clear. Regardless of cost, offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens is a complete non-starter on principle. It would become yet another enticement for individuals to come here illegally – in the process, endangering themselves and breaching…
Gary Trott tries to apply too much common sense to public-sector budgeting: What should a Rhode Island city or town do if it suddenly finds itself with a surplus of unspent funds amounting to nearly $6 million? You’d think that it would do the responsible thing and not spend those funds in order to ease…
Speaking of statism, the Providence Journal editorial page betrayed its inclination in that direction, recently, on the topic of alcohol tax: Congratulations. By beating each other’s alcohol tax down to zero, neither New Hampshire nor Massachusetts is collecting revenues that it could. And where does this new era of tax-free booze to the north leave…
Yesterday, I presented two facts: Every year, from 2003 to 2008, thousands of people who had filed tax returns from Rhode Island filed them from somewhere else. Subtracting those who moved in the opposite direction, during that five-year span, the state lost 17,221 taxpayers. Because those leaving have typically had higher average incomes, the state…
Yesterday, I showed that the number of high-income tax returns increased every year in Rhode Island from 2002 to 2007. In fact, the rate of growth among taxpayers in every income category above $50,000 was greater in Rhode Island than in its neighboring states through 2004, when things began to change. During the decade, Governor…
Three critical considerations tend to get lost in debates about population and the ways in which it flows and changes over time. The first is that large trends trump. A tax break isn’t going to prevent a global economic hurricane from rearing its head in one state while devastating the next one over; there will…