Taxation

The sun rose and somewhere a dog bit a man. And the Tax Foundation has new numbers {PDF} that paint the usual grim picture for Rhode Island. Here are some bullet points taken from the ProJo story on the matter (all are quotes from the piece): The Tax Foundation based its rankings on five taxes:…

I’ll add the most recent Tax Foundation analysis (released October 5) to the discussion about incomes and tax rates being batted around in the comments section…This year’s numbers show that both the income share earned by the top 1 percent and the tax share paid by the top 1 percent have reached all-time highs. In…

Elizabeth Gudrais has an article in today’s Projo on the National Conference of State Legislatures’ annual state budget survey ($$ required to view the original). This year’s study ranks Rhode Island #1 in the country in terms of tax increases between this year and last. The Projo article contains none-too-surprising reactions from the usual suspects;…

While we’re on the subject of pensions, the reason that many people believe that the public sector needs to move away from defined-benefit pension plans to defined contribution type retirement plans (and that the government has to move away from a defined benefit Social Security system) goes beyond the rationale that “it’s the way the…

I know it’s not the most exciting topic, but the Rhode Island Auditor General’s just-released report on municipal pensions most at risk may help explain some of the tax bills and the consequences of certain decisions made in various communities around the state. Category 1: Plans significantly underfunded with annual contributions significantly less than annual…

Here are a few more details from the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council’s annual 50-state tax-revenue comparison. Rhode Island is a top-10 state in terms of income and sales taxes collected whether you measure per-capita or as a percentage of personal income. The full set of New England numbers for this year are…(“All State and…

By now, this is low-hanging fruit. But duty impels us to prescribe the ProJo’s Neil Downing report on a new RIPEC report- “How Rhode Island Compares“: Rhode Island has one of the nation’s highest tax burdens – and a big reason for that is local property taxes, a new study shows. Based on the overall…

Gambling, Alcohol and Tobacco are all subject to “sin” taxes. We may as well add gasoline to the mix, too. According to the The National Center for Policy Analysis, all of ’em hit the poor hardest (h/t). Here’s a distillation of the Executive Summary of their report. “The dollar amount spent on the lottery by…

Projo business columnist Neil Downing points out that Rhode Island’s capital gains tax debate tends to get over-simplified to the point of inaccuracy. The oft-discussed phaseout (that the House has voted to delay this year) applies only to long-term capital gains, i.e. profits made from selling assets held for five or more years. Tax rates…