ITEP’s new report, Credit Where Credit is (Over) Due, examines four proven state tax reforms that can assist families living in poverty. They include refundable state Earned Income Tax Credits, property tax circuit breakers, targeted low-income credits, and child-related tax credits. The report also takes stock of current anti-poverty policies in each of the states and offers suggested policy reforms.

Earlier this month, the US Census Bureau released new data showing that the national poverty rate increased from 13.2 percent to 14.3 percent in 2009.  Faced with a slow and unresponsive economy, low-income families are finding it increasingly difficult to find decent jobs that can adequately provide for their families.

Most states have regressive tax systems which exacerbate this situation by imposing higher effective tax rates on low-income families than on wealthy ones, making it even harder for low-wage workers to move above the poverty line and achieve economic security. Although state tax policy has so far created an uneven playing field for low-income families, state governments can respond to rising poverty by alleviating some of the economic hardship on low-income families through targeted anti-poverty tax reforms.

One important policy available to lawmakers is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The credit is widely recognized as an effective anti-poverty strategy, lifting roughly five million people each year above the federal poverty line.  Twenty-four states plus the District of Columbia provide state EITCs, modeled on the federal credit, which help to offset the impact of regressive state and local taxes.  The report recommends that states with EITCs consider expanding the credit and that other states consider introducing a refundable EITC to help alleviate poverty.

The second policy ITEP describes is property tax "circuit breakers." These programs offer tax credits to homeowners and renters who pay more than a certain percentage of their income in property tax.  But the credits are often only available to the elderly or disabled.  The report suggests expanding the availability of the credit to include all low-income families.

Next ITEP describes refundable low-income credits, which are a good compliment to state EITCs in part because the EITC is not adequate for older adults and adults without children.  Some states have structured their low-income credits to ensure income earners below a certain threshold do not owe income taxes. Other states have designed low-income tax credits to assist in offsetting the impact of general sales taxes or specifically the sales tax on food.  The report recommends that lawmakers expand (or create if they don’t already exist) refundable low-income tax credits.

The final anti-poverty strategy that ITEP discusses are child-related tax credits.  The new US Census numbers show that one in five children are currently living in poverty. The report recommends consideration of these tax credits, which can be used to offset child care and other expenses for parents.

Earlier this summer the Census Bureau released data that revealed which states can be considered "low tax" states. We took a closer look at the data and found that while a handful of states could be considered low tax states overall, their taxes are not low for poor and middle-income families.

In fact, in six states — Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington — there is a fundamental mismatch between the Census data and how these supposed low tax states treat people living at or near the poverty line. One of the major reasons for this is that these states have largely unbalanced tax structures. Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington rely heavily on property and sales taxes because they don't have a broad-based personal income tax. (For more on a Washington ballot initiative to introduce an income tax, see our Digest article below.) Despite having income taxes, Arkansas and Arizona rely heavily on sales taxes, thus making their tax structures balanced on the backs of low- and middle-income taxpayers.

Some 44 House Democrats have reportedly written a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling for an extension of the Bush tax cuts on investment income for the richest two percent of Americans. These Democrats would preserve the historically low income tax rate of 15 percent for capital gains and stock dividends for the wealthiest taxpayers. This stance places them to the right of Ronald Reagan and illustrates a surprising lack of familiarity with history and economics.

Read the report. 

Now that the primary election dust has settled and signature gathering deadlines have come and gone, we have a clear picture of the good and bad tax initiatives voters in a number of states will have an opportunity to support or oppose.  Over the coming month, the Tax Justice Digest will provide updates on tax-related ballot campaigns including links to the best resources to help voters understand what to expect when they hit the polls in November.

Indiana voters will soon decide if their state's constitution should be permanently altered to limit property taxes to 1 percent of assessed value for owner occupied residences, 2 percent for rental and farm property and 3 percent for business property. The state legislature has already approved this short-sighted measure twice.

Voters would find it helpful to read this brief from the Indiana Community Action Association which dispels false claims about the benefits of these property tax caps, including claims that all homeowners are likely to benefit, that having these caps in the constitution will prevent taxes generally from being raised, and that the caps are well-designed in the first place.

Missouri voters will be asked to decide on Proposition A and the fate of the city earnings taxes levied in Kansas City and St. Louis. If Proposition A is approved, voters will be asked every five years to decide whether or not these earnings taxes should exist. (If voters then decide to not allow them, they will be phased out over a ten year period). The revenue generated from these earning taxes represents about 30 percent of the cities' general fund budgets.

A key supporter (and bankroller) of the initiative, Rex Sinquefield, has said that the money "has to be replaced" if the earnings taxes are eliminated, but he doesn't actually say how that money will get replaced. "That was the reason that we proposed a 10-year phase-out," he says, "so you have a lot of time to figure this out."

If passed, the initiative would exclude any other local government from levying their own earnings taxes, further limiting the ability of local governments to raise funds in a progressive way. Missouri voters would be wise to take a step back and heed this warning from the St. Louis Post Dispatch editorial board: "The loss of (earnings tax) revenue would reverberate beyond the residents of St. Louis and Kansas City. Voters throughout both metropolitan regions would face increased uncertainty as their core cities struggled to find replacement revenue. As go the metro areas, so goes Missouri."

For more on the harmful ramifications of Proposition A, read this fact sheet from the Missouri Budget Project.

Washington State voters will soon have the rare opportunity to improve their state's tax and budget structure in a dramatic way. If Initiative 1098 passes, the state's property tax will be cut by 20 percent, the state's unique Business and Occupation tax will be eliminated for small businesses and a new income tax on the wealthiest of Washingtonians will become the law of the land. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has endorsed I-1098 "as a big step toward tax fairness and reform, as well as a way of putting teachers into classrooms and poor families onto the state's Basic Health Plan. " ITEP's report Who Pays found that Washington has the most regressive tax structure in the nation and badly needs a tax reform of this sort.

Californians will have the opportunity to repeal three costly business tax breaks by voting to support Proposition 24, “The Tax Fairness Act”.  Enacted in 2008 and 2009, the three business tax cuts — elective single sales factor, tax credit sharing, and net operating loss carrybacks — are scheduled to go into effect in 2011 at an estimated cost of $1.3 billion.  As a new Budget Brief from the California Budget Project explains, these tax breaks benefit relatively few corporations and come at a time when the state can ill afford such a significant loss of revenue.  

In Colorado, most Democratic and Republican lawmakers are united in their opposition to three anti-tax initiatives on the state’s ballot which would drastically reduce state and local revenue and hinder the state’s ability to pay for education, health care, public safety, and other core services. 

Amendment 60 would require school districts to cut property taxes and replace the lost revenue. Proposition 101 would slash the state’s income tax and cut other fees. Amendment 61 would limit or disallow government borrowing.  A Colorado Legislative Staff analysis of the combined impact of the three measures found that the state would lose about $2.1 billion in revenue, while taking on $1.6 billion in K-12 education funding to make up for the local property tax cuts.  As a result, education spending would constitute nearly 99% of the state’s general fund budget.

Candidates for governor in Idaho have been debating the appropriate scope of the state sales tax base, while the debate in Minnesota has focused more on issues of progressivity.  In Alaska, the bandwagon in favor of cutting taxes to “create jobs” continues to gain speed.

Idaho: Recent polling shows that 48 percent of Idahoans would support raising taxes to avoid cuts in education spending, while only 38 percent would oppose taking that route.  With this new information in hand, both Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keith Allred and Republican incumbent Butch Otter may want to rethink their positions on sales tax reform. 

Governor Otter insists that Idaho’s plethora of sales tax exemptions are vital to businesses in the state and should be left intact, while candidate Allred claims that a huge number of these breaks are politically motivated giveaways that should be eliminated to pay for a reduction in the sales tax rate.  While Allred’s opposition to sales tax exemptions is encouraging, his insistence that every dollar raised be used to lower the sales tax rate (as opposed to using some of it to boost education spending) is more than a little disappointing.

Minnesota: Minnesota’s legislature has known for some of the time that the state is in need of progressive tax changes.  Unfortunately, the veto pen of Governor Tim Pawlenty has so far been able to prevent any progress on this issue.  With Pawlenty finally on his way out of office, Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) candidate Mark Dayton has made clear that he would take Minnesota in a different direction, if elected, by vigorously supporting progressive tax reform.  More specifically, in a debate last week Dayton reemphasized his support for a higher tax bracket on the state’s wealthiest residents. 

Republican candidate Tom Emmer, in contrast, repeated the same tired line about using tax cuts to boost economic growth.  But as Dayton pointed out during the debate, the League of Minnesota Cities actually found that candidate Emmer’s proposal to cut both taxes and spending would result in higher local property taxes.

Alaska: When it comes to taxes, there aren’t many choices on the Alaska ballot.  Democratic candidate Ethan Berkowitz recently proposed an almost $40 million cut in the state’s corporate income tax, which according to the Anchorage Daily News, Berkowitz claims he would pay for by doling out even more corporate welfare through tax credits that could allegedly boost the state’s economy.  Rather than criticize Berkowitz’s proposal or offer an alternative, Republican Sean Parnell’s campaign has taken the position that Berkowitz is lying, and that if elected Berkowitz would in fact do everything within his power to raise both taxes and spending.

While attending the second annual 9/12 Tea Party rally in Washington, one could not escape the focus by speakers and participants on tax policy. If there was one overarching theme of the rally, it was that the Obama Administration has sought to dramatically increase the size of the federal government by proposing and enacting dramatic increases in taxes and government spending. (For a reality check, remember that President Obama cut taxes for 98 percent of working Americans last year, proposes to leave the Bush tax cuts in place for 98 percent of taxpayers this year, and enacted a health care reform that reduces the deficit.)

What Tea Party rally attendees support is awfully murky, but what they oppose is clearer. They are against the healthcare reform, the bailouts, the recovery act that created so many jobs, cap and trade, and allowing any of the Bush tax cuts to expire. This opposition was taken to an extreme by some of the individual Tea Party attendees whose signs argued that allowing the tax cuts to expire is equivalent to sexually abusing children or that Obama’s expansion of government made him comparable to Hitler, the Soviet Union, or just a plain old socialist.

Deftly mirroring the anger of the crowd, Rep. Mike Pence (R - IN) elicited enormous cheers saying that “No American should face a tax increase in January, not one. We will not compromise our economy to accommodate the class warfare rhetoric of the American left or of this Administration.” In reality, it's the possibility of a Republican filibuster of President Obama's tax plan that might lead to all Americans having more income taxes withheld from their paychecks starting in January.

The disconnect from reality doesn't end there. The anti-tax rhetoric was not followed by substantive and fundamental calls for equally large decreases in government spending. There were no signs or speakers calling for the enormous cuts to Medicare, Social Security, or Medicaid that would be required to make lower taxes possible. There was certainly no articulation of what cuts would be needed to make up for the $700 billion in lost revenue if the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans were extended.

The sponsors and speakers of the rally also promoted extremely regressive and radical changes to the tax system. Freedom Works, the chief sponsor of the event, advocates replacing the current system with a single flat rate income tax, which was promoted by its representatives who spoke at the rally. In addition, several speakers also alluded to the need for a single national sales tax, which is also known as the "Fair Tax," to "fix" our tax system. Echoing both sentiments without specifying one over the other, the Tea Party-backed “Contract From America” states that the current tax system should be replaced with a single rate tax set forth in a law that is not longer than the Constitution.

As Citizens for Tax Justice demonstrated over and over and over again in the 1990’s, the single rate flat income tax proposed by Dick Armey (the leader of Freedom Works) would dramatically raise taxes on all but the richest Americans while also massively increasing deficits unless the single rate was much higher than proposed.

Similarly, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy showed in its 2004 analysis of the "Fair Tax" that it would actually increase taxes by an average of $3,200, or roughly 50%, for the average individual in the bottom 80% of income earners. In addition, in order to raise the amount of revenue currently being spent, the rate would have to be between 45% and 53%, rather than the 23% that flat tax supporters advocate.

While calls for the flat or "fair" tax incited some excitement, the crowd seemed more enthusiastic about basic calls for lower taxes or a simpler tax system rather than the radical tax changes advocated by the rally’s sponsors.

In both opposing President Obama’s policies and advocating for a regressive tax overhaul, the Tea Party leaders are attempting to get away with promising lower taxes and better government without facing the real consequences of specific policies.

Citizens for Tax Justice has updated its reports on the competing approaches to the Bush tax cuts to reflect the differences between S. 3773, the proposal introduced by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, and President Obama's proposal to make them permanent for all but the richest 2 percent of taxpayers.

CTJ has also, for the first time, added tables showing the percentage of taxpayers in each Congressional district who are rich enough to lose some portion of the Bush tax cuts under Obama's plan. The tables also show the percentage of taxpayers in each district who have adjusted gross income in excess of $1 million. About 80 percent of the revenue savings from Obama's plan would come from these taxpayers.

In case you don't have time to wade through all of these tables and figures, we'll give you the bottom line right now. In every Congressional district, only a small minority of taxpayers are rich enough to lose some portion of the Bush tax cuts under Obama's plan. The figure is less than 2% for a large majority of districts. It's over 5% in just 30 districts out of 436. Of course, the percentage of millionaires in each district is much smaller.

Read the report.

In an attempt to win votes, lots of gubernatorial candidates have been promising lots of tax cuts — despite the fact that many of their states face very bleak budgetary outlooks.  Here are examples from five states:

Rhode Island — John Robitaille won the Republican nomination for governor this past Tuesday on a platform that includes amending the state constitution to cap property tax increases at 2.5 percent per year.  Massachusetts's experience with a similar cap indicates that this proposal could have a very negative impact on local government services.

Wisconsin — Scott Walker was the winner of Wisconsin's Republican primary on Tuesday.  Walker is also running on an anti-tax platform, including a property tax "freeze" that would only allow revenue growth to the extent that new construction occurs.  Democrat Tom Barrett is also running on a campaign that heavily emphasizes cutting government spending, and enacting so-called "targeted" business tax cuts to create jobs.

Michigan — Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Snyder's proposal to cut taxes on Michigan corporations by $1.5 billion received some attention in the media this week.  Specifically, Snyder would repeal the Michigan Business Tax and replace it with a much smaller corporate tax.  Recent polling indicates that Snyder holds a substantial lead over Democrat Virg Bernero.

Florida — Some of the most absurd tax proposals we've seen in a gubernatorial race this year have come from Florida Republican Rick Scott.  In his very first year in office, Scott wants to slash both school property taxes and the corporate income tax — to the tune of $2.1 billion total in tax cuts.  Unspecified cuts in government spending would then be made to keep Florida's budget in balance.  After this, Scott claims he would focus his energy on eliminating Florida's corporate income tax entirely. Thankfully, Democrat Alex Sink is opposed to cutting the corporate income tax, though she has jumped on the job-creation tax credit bandwagon.

Maine — Both Democrat Libby Mitchell and Republican Paul LePage are running on anti-tax platforms in Maine.  Neither is open to the idea of using tax increases to balance the state's budget.  Mitchell claims that "Maine's income tax is too high and I will continue the effort to lower it."  LePage has stated that "Reducing the overall tax burden for all Maine citizens and small businesses is my vision for tax reform."

In 2009, North Carolina lawmakers eliminated their $4 billion budget gap (roughly 20% of the state’s general fund) with a mixture of spending cuts, increased federal assistance, and a two-year $1.3 billion temporary tax package.  While the tax package relied primarily on a regressive 1-cent increase in the state sales tax (it also included an income tax surcharge on high-income households and corporations), the significant amount of revenue it raised helped to stave off proposed devastating cuts to education, health care, and public safety.  But, the spending cuts made were still deep, and the impact has been felt by every family and community in the state.  

Last week, Governor Beverly Perdue announced that she intends to put together her 2011-2013 budget without the temporary taxes and instructed agencies to craft budgets that reduce spending by up to 15%. "I believe we should try to cut to the core ... and then we'll make those decisions later," Perdue said. "At this point in time, my budget will not have that sales tax increase."

Essentially, the state is back to the same budget challenge it faced two years ago — a new $3.3 billion budget shortfall — but this time without the federal government pitching in, and, if Governor Perdue has her way, with no new revenue package.  

The good news is North Carolina House and Senate Finance Committee members have been working together on a proposal for comprehensive tax reform, but no legislation has emerged from their discussions.  As North Carolina grapples with the news of a potentially significant budget shortfall next year, there are plenty of good reasons for state lawmakers to renew their commitment to progressive tax reform instead of resorting to painful spending cuts.

This week The Toledo Blade published an op-ed from Zach Schiller at Policy Matters Ohio discussing the disastrous fiscal impact of tax cuts enacted in the last decade. As the debate about tax cuts remains on the front burner on both the federal level and in many states, it's important that the Ohio story continue to be told.

In 2005, Ohio lawmakers voted to slash the state income tax (gradually reducing income tax rates by 21%) and eliminate two major business taxes. Now the state is facing a massive budget shortfall and those tax cuts haven't paid for themselves and aren't generating economic growth. Schiller says, "The idea was that tax cuts would help Ohio's economy grow. It hasn't happened. Since 2005, Ohio has continued to lose ground to other states."

And the tax cuts themselves were regressive. Citing ITEP data, Schiller says, "More than 40 percent of the income-tax cuts, when they are fully implemented next year, will go to the 5 percent of families with income of $135,000 or more a year."

He goes on to say, "We need to revitalize the income tax, in particular for high earners. We need to restore revenue from business taxes to levels that existed before the 2005 tax changes. Doing so would still leave the business share of state and local taxes well below where it was 30 years ago. Ohio needs to invest in our people, education system, and infrastructure. We should overhaul our tax system to produce the revenue we need to do so." We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

Speaking in Cleveland on Wednesday, President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to making the Bush tax cuts permanent for 98 percent of taxpayers and allowing them to expire at the end of this year for the richest two percent. Responding to reports that Republicans will try to block his proposal, the President said,

"So let me be clear to Mr. Boehner and everyone else:  we should not hold middle class tax cuts hostage any longer.  We are ready, this week, to give tax cuts to every American making $250,000 or less."

This is an accurate description of the situation. Republicans are threatening to vote against a bill to extend tax cuts for 98 percent of taxpayers in order to secure tax cuts for the richest 2 percent. We would not call everyone among the bottom 98 percent of taxpayers "middle class," but we certainly agree that tax cuts should not be extended for any more people.

As CTJ has noted, the Bush tax cuts were disproportionately aimed at the richest taxpayers, who happen to be the only taxpayers whose income grew wildly over the past several years. Data from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office indicates that nearly 39 percent of the income growth from 1979 to 2007 went to the richest one percent. That's more than went to the bottom 90 percent.

The Congressional Budget Office has also studied several different measures to create jobs and found that every measure it analyzed would create more jobs per dollar of cost than income tax cuts for the rich.

And yet, some members of Congress are determined to extend the tax cuts for the rich and will even block any bill that extends the tax cuts for everyone else.

The argument Republicans most often make is that many small business owners are among the richest two percent, and ending the tax cuts for these people will mean less job creation.

This argument is a red herring. Only 3 percent of taxpayers with business income (and only 5 percent of taxpayers who rely on business income for over half of their income) are rich enough to lose any of their income tax cuts under Obama's plan. These include many partners in law firms, accounting firms, hedge funds and other businesses we don't generally think of as "small" businesses. And even for those who do create jobs, there is no connection between income tax rates and hiring decisions. Businesses are not taxed on money they pay to their employees as wages, and small business owners are not taxed on income they reinvest in their businesses.

As President Obama pointed out, the only change that the richest taxpayers face is that income in the top two tax brackets will be taxed as it was at the end of the Clinton years.

"And for those who claim that this is bad for growth and bad for small businesses," the President said, "let me remind you that with those tax rates in place, this country created 22 million jobs, raised incomes, and had the largest surplus in history."

As a previous CTJ report (with state-by-state figures) explains, low- and middle-income taxpayers actually get a better deal on average under the President's proposal than under the Republican approach, because Obama would also make permanent the improvements in the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit that were part of the economic recovery act.

The President's speech Wednesday was partially a response to the one made in Cleveland two weeks earlier by House Republican Leader John Boehner, whose five-point "plan" to help the economy mainly consisted of continuing George W. Bush's tax and spending policies, not enacting any new reforms, and firing President Obama's economic advisers.

As CTJ previously reported, Boehner attacked loophole-closing provisions in the recently enacted $26 billion jobs bill (H.R. 1586) by describing them as exactly the opposite of what they really are. The provisions end abuses of the foreign tax credit. These abuses allow U.S. corporations to enjoy a negative tax rate on offshore investment income, which creates an obvious incentive to shift operations, jobs and profits offshore.

Boehner wrongly claimed that H.R. 1586 "is funded by a new tax hike that makes it more expensive to create jobs in the United States and less expensive to create jobs overseas."

On Wednesday, Boehner offered what some media outlets described as a "concession," which would be to freeze in place, for two years, all the Bush tax cuts and the spending levels in effect in 2008.

This would, of course, repeal several measures meant to address the economic crisis, including the economic recovery act enacted last year. The Congressional Budget Office recently concluded that the recovery act has created between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs, and increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by between 2.0 million and 4.8 million.

In one sense, Boehner's offer really is a concession, since the Republican position has until now been that the Bush tax cuts should be made permanent for all taxpayers, rather than extended temporarily. It's possible that Boehner made this move because he knows that his position on taxes is far more precarious than media reports suggest. Plenty of polls show that the majority of Americans want the tax cuts to expire for the richest two percent of taxpayers.

There's another problem for lawmakers who want to extend tax cuts for the rich. To get their way, they will have to vote against (or even filibuster, in the case of the Senate) a bill extending the tax cuts for 98 percent of taxpayers. President Obama was right when he described his opponents as holding tax cuts for most Americans "hostage" to protect tax cuts for the rich.

Convening a Georgia tax reform commission in the summer of 2010 is a bit like tightening environmental regulations after an oil spill — a fine idea, but one that would have been more helpful earlier in the game. Only months ago, the state legislature enacted a costly new income tax giveaway for the best-off seniors and paid for it, in part, by gutting the only refundable credit available to low-income Georgians. This week, the "Special Council on Tax Reform and Fairness for Georgians," which is charged with revamping the state's tax code, convened and heard testimony from ITEP staff and others. 

ITEP's testimony describes the long-term structural challenges facing Georgia's main revenue sources, and surveys the most creative (and most dangerous) responses to these structural threats. By focusing on options that have been implemented or seriously discussed in other states, the testimony provides a very practical working guide for moving Georgia's tax system into the 21st century.
 
ITEP's testimony focuses on four major categories of state taxes levied in Georgia: sales taxes, corporate income taxes, personal income taxes, and gas taxes. It identifies workable reforms (and unworkable red herrings) of which Council members should be aware as they formulate their recommendations. In each case, the testimony spotlights efforts to raise needed revenues and eliminate tax inequities by broadening the tax base to eliminate loopholes for various special interests.
 
On the income tax front, ITEP's testimony focused on the surprising, but laudable growth in the number of states that have pared back excessive tax breaks for capital gains, itemized deductions, and retirement income in recent years. In discussing the sales tax, ITEP noted that while relatively few states have succeeded in meaningfully expanding the sales tax base to include more services in recent years, a growing number are considering sensible plans to do so in 2010. The testimony also took note of the growing use of so-called "Amazon taxes" designed to ensure that e-commerce sales should be at least partially taxable.
 
The testimony also noted the folly of "racing to the bottom" to provide industry-specific or even company-specific tax breaks for businesses as a relocation incentive, and discussed how Georgia could enhance its long-inadequate transportation revenue streams by bolstering its gas tax. Numerous states have recently increased their gas taxes, and many more have seriously discussed gas tax increases or gas tax restructuring aimed at improving revenue sustainability.
 
More so than is usually the case with tax reform commissions, the Special Council's recommendations could carry some weight when the legislature convenes next year, not only because its high-powered roster includes Governor Sonny Perdue but also because its recommendations are required to be introduced, "without significant changes," for a vote in the legislature next year. Hopefully, the growing number of sensible base-broadening measures enacted by other states will provide the Council with a template for reform.

Candidates across the country are gearing up for the November elections. Over the coming months we'll highlight just some of the candidates running in local, state, and national races with an eye toward evaluating their positions in terms of tax fairness.

√ Current Iowa Governor Chet Culver - Iowa's film tax credit program has been costly and controversial. This week current Governor Chet Culver came out against keeping the program. He said in a recent news conference, "We’re not going to be taken for suckers. People, unfortunately, exploited that program.”

√ Current Illinois Governor Pat Quinn - During the Democratic primary we wrote about Governor Quinn's proposal to raise income taxes in a progressive way. Now Candidate Quinn is proposing that, in combination with an income tax hike, he would urge local school districts to reduce regressive property taxes. He recently said, "If you get additional new money from Springfield, from the state government, then I think part of the bargain has to be that the local school districts at least roll back a portion of their property taxes. It's a fair bargain."

√ Current Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick - Massachusetts voters will be asked to decide Question 3, which would slash the state sales tax from 6.25 to 3 percent. Despite the regressive nature of the sales tax, taking a hammer to this revenue stream would have a disastrous impact on the state budget. Current Governor and gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick has come out against Question 3, saying that if the sales tax is reduced it would be "a calamity."

X South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley - South Carolina collected $147 million in corporate income tax revenue in the last fiscal year. Nikki Haley has said that she would eliminate the tax altogether in hopes of attracting more businesses. She said at a recent fundraiser, "If we become a no-corporate-income-tax state, we will become a magnet for companies." Instead of proposing to throw out an entire revenue source, she should take a minute to read ITEP's latest policy brief on economic development.

X Vermont gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie - Candidate Dubie is campaigning on a promise to cut $240 million in income and property taxes paid by Vermonters. Specifically, he would drastically reduce personal income tax rates, cut corporate income tax rates, and support a property tax cap.  But when he was asked how the tax cuts would be paid for in terms of fewer services, Dubie couldn't offer any details.

Pennsylvania is the largest natural gas producing state that does not impose a severance tax on the removal of nonrenewable resources. Such a tax can be an important revenue source, particularly considering the current economic situation. It can also be a means to compensate residents and fund the societal costs associated with extracting a public (and environmentally damaging) resource.

As part of Pennsylvania’s final budget deal in July, state legislators agreed to work out details for a new severance tax on natural gas extracted from the Marcellus Shale reserves by October 1st.  Not surprisingly, with the deadline just a few weeks away, lobbyists led by the industry-backed Marcellus Shale Coalition have descended on Harrisburg to kill or at least weaken the proposed tax.  Governor Ed Rendell has lost all confidence that an agreement will be reached by the deadline and has threatened to veto any plan that does not come close to his preferred structure for the new tax.

The Governor supports a tax modeled on one in neighboring West Virginia, which imposes a 5 percent tax on the value of extracted gas and an additional levy of 4.7 cents per one thousand cubic feet.  A recent report from the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center supports adopting the West Virginia model.  According to the report, if Pennsylvania followed the West Virginia approach, the state would raise an estimated $71 million (revenue Governor Rendell is counting on to close a $282 million budget gap for fiscal year 2010-2011) and as much as $400 million by 2014-2015.

Industry supporters want the tax to start at 1.5 percent of the value of the extracted gas for the first three years of the well’s operation and increased to 5 percent only in the following years.  Governor Rendell says that "about 50 percent of all the natural gas is pumped out during the first five years" of a well's producing life and calls the proposal “ridiculous.” 

Only time will tell if policy will trump politics in the Keystone State.