Category: Taxes
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Will Yellow Jackets Come To Richmond?
I keep wondering when the new French fashion rage, the yellow safety vest or gilet jaune, finds its way across the Atlantic. The next few weeks may provide some motivation in Virginia, because the General Assembly returns with financial pressures high and consensus in short supply. Tuesday morning the 2019 General Assembly sees its opening…
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Governor Hints At Local Business Tax Reform
On Friday, after skirting the topic in a major address to a business conference in Williamsburg, Governor Ralph Northam told a reporter that “he’s planning to ask the General Assembly to tackle business tax reform,” adding it would be “comprehensive.” The reporter asked about it because of other comments made by Secretary of Finance Aubrey…
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To Get Useful Answers, Ask Correct Questions
It’s all in how you ask the question. The Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University has done a pre-General Assembly poll testing various issues that may dominate the 2019 session. The headlines are driven by the favorable and unfavorable rankings (ask me about President Tariff Man this morning as I survey…
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Amazon Deal Highlights Virginia’s Competitive Advantage Over Maryland
Many Virginians have qualms about the $550 million in job-creation incentives plus more than $1 billion in promised transportation and higher-ed investments it took to recruit a $2.5 billion Amazon facility to Northern Virginia. But things could be worse. Maryland offered an $8.5 billion package — and didn’t land the deal. The Washington Post is asking…
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Bacon Bits: Taxaginia, SCC Approvals, Blue VA
The Taxaginia Total: $1.7 Billion in 2020 The four taxes I wrote about in “Taxaginia” last month could reach a combined fiscal impact of $1.7 billion by about 2020. In preparation for a talk (which I will not get to give today after all), I did a bit more digging and some additional information has…
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The Push for EITC Cash Grants Accelerates
With the 2019 General Assembly now a handful of weeks away, the main advocacy group for a new cash welfare entitlement in Virginia is ramping up its efforts with various appeals, perhaps testing themes for later use. On Wednesday on its website the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis was arguing that the state Earned Income…
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Confusion, Silence Will Earn Business Higher Taxes
“I’m not going to get into it unless anybody wants me to.” So said Kristin Collins, policy development director for the Virginia Department of Taxation, as she neared the end of her November 19 slide presentation on federal tax conformity and its impact on Virginia state taxes. The final handful of slides focused on the business…
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Va 2019 General Assembly session – prefiled House of Delegates bills
Much ado about nothing. As of this morning there were 83 prefiled bills for the House of Delegates and 225 prefiled bills for the State Senate. With a few exceptions the House prefiles are pretty “ho hum”. I will examine the Senate prefiles in a subsequent column. One from column A and two from column…
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Just Give It Back and Here’s How
A joke making the rounds Wednesday had Governor Ralph Northam agreeing that Virginians did deserve a return of the windfall tax increase flowing to the state due to conformity, but we’d have to take it as Amazon Prime memberships. Don’t expect laughter if the 2019 General Assembly votes out a massive multi-year incentive package for…
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A Performance Rating for Virginia Local Governments
Goochland County offers the most bang for the buck of the localities in the Richmond metropolitan region, according to a local government rating system devised by the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation. The rating system compares fiscal indicators such as property tax rates and collections, per capita indebtedness, school spending per capita, and unfunded pension…
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Updates: VCCS Transfers and Dominion Taxes
A Good Idea Which Is Spreading A recent announcement from the Virginia Community College System provides a nice enhancement to an earlier Bacon’s Rebellion story about the smooth transition VCCS students can make to certain Virginia public universities. A new articulation agreement has been signed with private Randolph-Macon College in Ashland. The new agreement covers transfers…
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Blue Wave Does Not Change Do-Nothing Consensus
The 2018 Congressional elections have been dubbed by some as “the most important mid-term elections in history,” but that’s mostly partisan blather. Democrats did indeed re-take control of the House of Representatives. But two more years of hyper-partisan gridlock will not change the nation’s perilous fiscal trajectory. While many bemoan the lack of consensus in…
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Thumbs Down on One Amendment, Thumbs Up on the Other
Bacon’s Rebellion doesn’t do candidate endorsements — this is a public policy blog, not a political blog. But we do express our preferences for and against proposed constitutional amendments. And it happens that there are two proposed amendments on the ballot this year. The first one reads: Should a county, city, or town be authorized…
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Taxaginia? Conformity Tax Would Be Number Four
Each of the four tax increases I discussed in this guest column for the Richmond Times-Dispatch today has a strong constituency behind it, and logical arguments in its favor. Only one is in effect now (the hospital provider taxes), and the other three are merely pending. Only one of them, amendments to the sales and…
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Conformity: Option on Deductions Saves $370M
If Virginia were to allow its taxpayers to keep taking itemized deductions at the state level, even though they take the new higher federal standard deduction, almost 550,000 more would be expected to itemize at the state level, Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne told state legislators Thursday. Almost 90,000 would be people who were not…