Democrats in the Virginia State Senate have beaten the attempt by Governor Glenn Youngkin and Virginia Republicans to cut the commonwealth’s income tax rates and reform Virginia’s sales tax until at least 2025.
SB 632, filed by State Senator Richard Stuart (R-Montross), was continued into 2025 on Tuesday in an overwhelming vote by the Senate Subcommittee on Finance and Appropriations, led by State Senator L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth).
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Republican leadership is blasting Governor Tony Evers for threatening to kill a bill that would boost state shared revenue and bail out financially troubled Milwaukee.Â
The liberal governor, however, isn’t the only critic of the legislation that pours hundreds of millions of dollars of new taxpayer revenue into Badger State towns, villages, cities and counties.Â
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The state of Tennessee has collected $585.8 million more than budgeted in taxes and fees in the first three months of the fiscal year.
That’s after the state collected $4.6 billion more than its initial budgeted estimate for last fiscal year. Tennessee’s State Funding Board heard testimony Thursday from economists as it worked toward establishing next fiscal year’s estimates.
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At a Connecticut General Assembly hearing Thursday, state lawmakers clashed on visions of tax policy, with Republicans pressing for sales-tax reduction and Democrats advocating a mix of tax increases and targeted relief.
According to the nonprofit Tax Foundation, 12.8 percent of Connecticut residents’ income goes to government coffers, making the combined state and local tax take the second-highest in the U.S., just behind New York’s 14.1 percent overall burden.
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Some Pennsylvania lawmakers are proposing that the commonwealth offset some of the inflationary burden on residents by pausing certain taxes.
One bill State Senator Lisa Boscola (D-Bethlehem) is currently drafting would stop sales taxation in June and July 2022 at a time the senator says the state can afford to do so. In a memorandum seeking co-sponsors for her bill, she cited Governor Tom Wolf’s (D) recent declaration that Pennsylvania will amass a budget surplus for Fiscal Year 2021-22 of over $2 billion and a similarly large surplus for the following year. Since budget years end on June 30, the legislation is thus timed to spread the financial loss to the state over both budget cycles.Â
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A Dayton area Ohio senator wants voters to have the final say on county sales tax increases, introducing a bill that would require a vote on tax hikes.
Senate Bill 93Â would require any county commission to get voter approval before raising the county rate of sales and use tax. Two statutes currently allow for counties to raise sales taxes, but voter approval is not always required.
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State revenue projections for Florida in May have exceeded expectations, according to a new report from state economists. May’s state income reflected a tenth straight month of revenue exceeding state projections, which economists say is a good sign despite the cost of products and goods going up.Â
The Florida Legislature’s Office of Economic & Demographic Research announced $3.6 billion in general revenue. The original projections had the state raking in over one-half million dollars less.
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In the mood for a depressing statistic? A new report from the financial services firm Self concludes that the average American will pay an astounding $525,037 in taxes over their lifetime—roughly 34 percent of their lifetime earnings.Â
But the numbers aren’t uniform across the country; they vary wildly from state to state. Based on taxes on earnings, spending, property, and cars, here are the 10 states where residents pay the highest taxes over a lifetime.
1. New Jersey
Topping the list is New Jersey, where residents will, on average, owe an astounding $932,000 in taxes over their lifetime. That’s nearly 50 percent of their typical lifetime earnings!
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