According to Singers(August 24,2017), ITEP’S (July, 2017), (July, 2017),(August 2011), and(December 2011), higher sales and gas tax in Connecticut have consequences and a solution proposed to reduce tax burden on low income family. Based on the readings and my understanding of this topic, I conclude that increasing sales and gas taxes in Connecticut to fix a budget crisis will be financially harmful to low income families and needs to be address with the new policy. Singer(August 24,2017), pointed out that, Connecticut legislators are deciding to increase the sales tax from its current level to 6.85 percent to fix a budget deficit, estimated to reach $3.5 billion in two years and improve state aid to towns. Based on Tax Foundation studies, …show more content…
Comparing sales tax to other states shows that, Connecticut’s sales tax is not among the highest. According to Singer's (Aug 24, 2017), the Connecticut 6.35 percent sales tax ranks thirty-two in the US. It is higher than certain state such as Massachusetts, and lower than others, such as Rode Island and New York. As Connecticut tries to grow its economy and fix it budget crisis with higher sales tax, will create a financial problem for the lower and middle classes. "Based on estimate produced by ITEP data, low income families spend seventy five percent of their income on items subjected to sales tax, higher than fifty percent spent by middle-income families and seventeen percent spent by the richest families”(ITEP). Considering this, the tax do not affect upper income families,but low and mid-income people who cannot afford the tax . Comparing gas tax to other states shows that, Connecticut’s gas tax is not among the highest. According to the graph provided by the ITEPS research report (July 2017), Connecticut’s four percent gas tax is higher than certain states such as Kentucky, South Dakota, and Michigan, but lower than other states such as Alaska, Louisiana and New Mexico. Excise tax on gasoline is an efficient way to generate
Gas is something we need in our day-to-day life to operate vehicles that bring us places we need to go. Without gas we can't go on living our normal lives. Sadly the prices of gas are not pleasant to the consumers at times, but we have to deal with it. Around the year 2012 gas was a staggering $ 3.60 average and was $4.00 at time, the people were asking the government to mandate gas prices. Although if the government were to mandate gas prices, the prices would be more appealing to the consumers, but not for the long run.
In addition. , many state taxes continue to rise to an unbearable level. Massachusetts land taxes raised over
Texas does outperform other states in terms of economic growth and population growth. Many people move to Texas because of the jobs and they do taxes right. (Batheja, 2013) Gov. Rick Perry believes Texas’s performance through the recession is due to lack of income tax. He says “You can stop trying to figure out how to pay the state income tax, because we don’t have one.” (Batheja, 2013) The Tax Foundation, a conservative-leaning research group, ranks Texas ninth-best on its State Business Tax Climate Index, largely because of the state’s lack of an income tax. (Batheja, 2013) On the other hand, Texas’s high property taxes remains a crucial complaint among business and homeowners. It’s harder for small business to pay their taxes especially if their business wasn’t very profitable. Small business end up using their own personal savings, mortgages, or borrow money in order to pay their taxes. Having a state tax would benefit small business. Although having no state tax is accepted by many, it puts a dent on cities and towns. Local debt has increased over the past decade, in large part to cover the costs for new schools and public maintenance projects. (Batheja, 2013) The state is pushing projects such as building of highways and roads to cities and counties. (Batheja, 2013) In 2012, more than 500 lawsuits were from school districts arguing that our public education isn’t properly
Depending on local municipalities the total tax rate can be as high as 7.5%. County and local taxes in most areas bring the sales tax rate to 6.75% – 7% . Tax in North Carolina is tremendously high. If you buy something for 14.99$ tax is a $1.01. People should be tax a fair rate.
“Most cities our size have a 2% sales tax, if we raised it to 2% then it would put us even with all the other cities in the area,” said Million. “Individually I don’t think that would have a great impact on the individual citizens.”
The governments in any country use various taxation systems to raise funds to fund its national projects. The most common tax system is the income tax whereby the government raises funds from individual’s earnings. However, in the past few years, there has been heated debate about the adverse effects of progressive income tax on productivity and a proposal to replace it with national sales tax (Hodge, 2017). The national sales tax also known as the fair tax is intended to replace the current income tax and the idea is to enable the government to generate income from consumptions as opposed to earnings. This document examines the positives and negatives of the proposed national sales tax on the U.S. economy. The suggestion to impose a tax on consumption rather than consumption aims at encouraging savings and investments to improve productivity and promote economic growth. It is expected to promote fairness in the taxation because individuals will pay according to what they consume and not what they earn.
The high taxes in many states like Connecticut damage the economy and drive away citizens. Many states such as Connecticut, California and Massachusetts have very high tax rates. This does not mean, however, that their governments make use of these high tax rates for improvement. In fact, Connecticut is one of the wealthiest states in the nation, yet even with high, it still has a large deficit. Derek Thompson writes of this issue, “Despite being the richest state in the country, by per-capita income, Connecticut’s budget is a mess. Its pensions are woefully underfunded. Its deficit is projected to surpass $2 billion, or 12 percent of its total annual tax revenue. Hartford is approaching bankruptcy. Conservatives look at Connecticut and see
There could have been outside elements that could have swayed Bush or Obama into extending the tax cuts but private interests were clearly involved to allow this to continue. Over the past couple of years, the government is faced with shut down because of law of funds and debt but still continue to allow the hyper wealthy and large conglomerates to continue to reap immense profits without paying their fair share.
According to the following articles; "Retailers Pan Democrats' Proposal To Raise State Sales Tax" by Stephen singer, “The efficiency of market and the cost of Taxation” in Dirk Mateer and Lee Coppock’s, Principles of Macroeconomics 2nd ed.,"How Sales and Excise Taxes Work", "Most Americans live in States with Variable-Rate Gas Taxes", "How Long Has it Been Since Your State Raised its Gas Tax", and "Building a Better Gas Tax" from, www.itepnet.org and www.ctj.org, the authors informs the reader about the consequences the government's decision to increase gasoline prices and high state sales tax to fix transportation systems in Connecticut can have a negative impact on the lives of low income family. In Stephen singer’s article, Connecticut
1. Select two companies whose product(s) you use in your daily life. You may choose any firms you wish, as long as their information is publicly available (as to their products and financial information) and they are known to the average person.
It may be surprising to know that those big men you see bossing you around and flashing cash at you, are actually being stolen from. And not just a little. For you, lovely taxpayer are very aware that you are paying your “fair share” of your “hard earned money” and aware of all the “free” programs “your” money funded. You the lower 50 percent by terms of population and wealth only account for three percent of the federal income tax annual revenue. You use the “free” programs such as food stamps, and social security, and the like, as though you payed for them. Not surprisingly, you feel like you are taxed too much, what do you do ? You blame somebody else ! (of course you do) Guess who ? The funder of all the spectacular government programs you use and “earned”. You want to
Piggybacking a considerable sales tax of ¾ cent onto the state’s current rate of 8% is a good idea. Piggybacking is the best option I would recommend to you as a method of raising the revenue. The attachment of the tax would make the people pay more than they do while making sales. The idea can raise revenue that can be helpful to meet the budget. Te people will have to pay as every day people make sales and therefore cannot evade the tax. The idea is good as it is a must one makes sales and buying decisions each day. The tax would be helpful as the people would benefit from what they have raised from the extra tax charged on their sales. The ¾ cent tax is not as much and therefore won’t affect in a great deal the personal budgets.
Lonnie, I enjoyed reading your discussion this week about raising gasoline taxes. I read the article and found it to be a tough topic to grasp. The article states, “A big argument against raising the gasoline tax to provide more money for transportation projects is that the gas tax, by its nature, affects low- and middle-income people more than it does the wealthy.” I found this statement to be very accurate for many other things as well. As we have learned in this class there are many different ideas to change taxes or hourly wages for certain brackets of individuals but we must look at all the consequences this might cause. Raising taxes for gasoline just for individuals who fall into a specific bracket seems to be unfair. After reading the
The New York property tax problem has grown out of hand and now threatens the state's economic growth. If New York wants to attract more businesses and residents to capitalize on the full potential the state's new casinos will offer the state economically, it must reduce its overall tax burden. By reducing their sky-high property taxes, it can lower some of the pressure placed on the state's equally high income tax rates. Working to fulfill his campaign promise from 2011, New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed a $1.7 billion plan to reduce the amount New Yorkers pay in income tax each year as well as reform the problematic state revenue source in January.
From food, to their income, to their homes, American citizens are taxed in some way shape or form. We all know this but, not enough Americans know where their money is going. We don't have enough say in where are money is going. Money isn't just given to us we work for it and a chunk of what we work for is taken away from us and we don't get a say in how it's used. Another thing is it sould be a requirement for the government to send us something that shows us where each percentage of our money is going and how it will be used. We also need to adjust how we tax certain groups of people. Our current tax laws are flawed and they need to be changed.