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We are already paying more than our fair share.
by Rob Roper
Here’s a hard truth those on the Left will never acknowledge: Anyone who pays taxes in Vermont is already paying MORE than “their fair share.” We already pay the highest property taxes in the country. Is that fair? We have the third highest state and local tax burden at 11.53 percent. Is that fair? Only eleven states have a higher state sales tax than Vermont’s 6 percent, the highest of which is 7 percent, and two of those states have zero income tax. Is that fair?
Tax “the rich”? We already have one of the highest marginal income tax rates at 8.75 percent. Is that fair?
We are funding a state budget of over $9 billion for a population of 640,000 – up $3.2 billion over the past five years. As of 2023 only four states spent more money per capita than Vermont’s $12,167.
And it’s not like we’re seeing positive results from all this excessive taxing and spending. Our public education system is an expensive disaster despite spending more money per student than every other state but one. Our healthcare system is an expensive disaster despite our paying significantly higher insurance premiums than every other state. We pay some of the highest electric rates in the country. We have a housing affordability and accessibility crisis. Our roads and bridges aren’t in any great shape….
According to the financial website WalletHub, Vermont ranks 40th in the nation for positive ROI (return on investment) for tax dollars spent. That’s bad. All of this is to say there is plenty of bloat, inefficiency, overspending, and unnecessary spending that can be cut before another penny of taxes should be raised – on anybody. For any ostensible reason. Or, in a simple bumper sticker: NO NEW TAXES! We, the people of Vermont, are tapped out.
So, here’s my advice to VTGOP legislators when they return to the State House in January, to quote Nancy Reagan, just… say… no.
Any bill that comes up for a vote that would raise a tax, create a new tax, increase a fee, or regulation that would result in an increase in cost to consumers, vote no.
If Democrats want to raise taxes, sneak in higher fees, increase spending, pile on expensive Global Warming Solutions Act regulations on home heating, driving, or for frivolous lawsuits… they have the votes to do it. It’s on them. Don’t help them, and do not give them any political cover. Vote no.
Put this stake in the ground on day one – we will not vote for higher taxes — and stick to it. Let Vermont taxpayers know every day in no uncertain terms that you are on their side. That is the formula that won you six senate seats and nineteen house seats in 2024: voting no on the Clean Heat Standard tax on home heating fuel, voting no on the 14 percent property tax increase, voting no on the Renewable Energy Standard surcharge on electric bills, voting no on the 20 percent DMV fee increase, voting no on the new payroll tax…. You did this loudly. Voters noticed, appreciated it, and rewarded you. If you want hold onto the gains you earned last election, maybe even pick up more seats, or, dare to dream, take control of the senate, I highly recommend you dance with who brung ya.
The situation Vermont is in today is the result of decades of financial mismanagement and misplaced priorities by the party that has owned the majority (sometimes supermajority) in Montpelier since 2005. Over all that time, Vermonters have been told to just deal with the hits to our household budgets that higher and higher taxes – at rates routinely double that of inflation and more than triple that of state economic growth – regardless of what those cuts to our own budgets mean. It’s time for the big spenders in state government to take their turn making due with less. Practically every other state is able to do this — and with better results. That’s fair.
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Categories: Commentary
Very good view Rob! Love your opening line
No new taxes, as we will steal the money out of another fund to keep your property taxes from going higher.
They won’t raise taxes, they will just raise existing ones!
Yes John. I am very concerned about the results of the Reappraisal of our properties. Especially, that they are being performed by “professionals”! Believe me, I hope I am wrong because the results may result in my need to move from the family farm to (maybe) Tn.
Thank you again Mr. Roper. I wonder when our representatives will begin considering cutting existing taxes by privatizing commercially viable services arenas they’ve occupied.
Watch this play out, when those in charge reduce taxes (wishful thinking) by 1/2% then they will puff out their chests and pat each other on the backs and try to make us believe they have done a good thing, all the time forgetting that they raised taxes by 12% the year before. SOS
The fox is the problem.
“Article 9. [Citizens’ rights and duties in the State; bearing arms; taxation]… previous to any law being made to raise a tax, the purpose for which it is to be raised ought to appear evident to the Legislature to be of more service to community than the money would be if not collected.”
We must hold the Governor and the Legislature to their constitutional responsibility… for a change.
Unfortunately, the foxes are guarding our chicken coop, we all know who the foxes are, and we have yet to figure out how to get rid of them.
Why Jay, I didn’t know you had such a sense of humor! “hold the Governor and the Legislature to their constitutional responsibility…” ROFL
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” – W.S.
No laughing matter.
Thanks Rob for this commentary.
This “no new taxes” is exactly the same message Governor Scott has been giving since first getting elected. It is why he has been the Governor leveling the most vetoes in Vermont history. In 2024 enough Republicans were elected to prevent overrides. We need to keep focused on this message, support the Governor in the upcoming session in this effort and elect more Republicans to contnue to shift balance towards practicality and affordability in the next election
Yes, but this is where it gets tricky for the R caucus. With the supermajorities broken, the governor will have to sign “must pass” bills — budget, yield bill, T bill. He can’t veto knowing the Democrats can/will override him and take the blame (assuming bad things). Such as last year, the gov signed the yield bill with a 1.1% property tax increase. The house and senate Republicans are going to have to decide if they want to provide the governor cover by voting to support as well to their own detriment (as they did last year), or vote based on their own self-interest. If they are smart, it will be the latter. But to this point their modus operandi seems to be follow the governor at all times.
Phil scott is one of the people that was pushing republicans to denounce president trump and vote for harris…
Rob roper has denounced trump as much as he possibly can…
Phil scott with the help of patti mccoy started a petition to remove trump from office early.That was signed on to by all but seventeen of the republican representatives we have in montpelier…
When you vote a republican in the state of vermont, you are not voting for a republican…
We have a liar that is running for office, and we have republicans that have deceived us…
We need a real republican representation that values what president trump has done for america.And that will be willing to stand up and help him… We don’t have that in vermont…
I switched from voting dem to voting rep last year. I was looking forward to change. But I’m really, really considering going back to dem this upcoming year. Republicans are showing their fealty to trump with unprecedented urgency to relinquish independence in favor of “whatever trump says”. This website has totally shifted my perspective about republicans. They much prefer a top down approach, stripping states and institutions of their independence; distorting historical republican values such as “no tariffs” to “tariff everything”; republicans like the executive branch to thumb the scale of every aspect of life. That’s too bad, I say.
He runs a good smoke screen for sure. How much have your taxes gone down since he has been in office?
Have they ever stayed the same?
This is all crap talk, remember when poppy bush said read my lips? They raised taxes and he sold us out to the new world order!
Hey, it’s just a coincidence the THE SAME FN THING IS GOING ON RIGHT HERE IN VERMONT, 2025!
Nothing to see here, nope. Strongly worded article solves it all, or does it supply cover? You decide.
No New Commissions, No New Bills, No new Stupid people in the legilature who do not know what they are doing, no new anything, destroy every bill and start over.
“start over” We did that once, but it looks like the tide has caught up with us. There are a few options, but we’ll have to stop being so *od *amn independent and work together.
They know well what they are doing, they know very well. Don’t be fooled.
Re: “stop being so *od *amn independent and work together.”
You have it backwards. Independent free markets are the only governance that allows us to ‘work together’ … voluntarily.
“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.”
“The key insight of Adam Smith’s … is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”
But I dare say it, repeating these poignant truths over and again doesn’t seem to move the dial of greater understanding. The perpetrators and voters either don’t understand or are complicit.
As long as Governor Scott continues to advocate for Act 173 Education Reform, failed legislation that effectively attacks Vermont’s School Choice Tuitioning governance and independent schools, stifles education freedom, continues to increase education taxes, and does nothing to improve student outcomes, not only is he one of the foxes, he’s the alpha fox. And the only people who advocate for his leadership in this regard are those who are, themselves, a party to the education industrial complex special interest groups stalking their financial prey at the great education watering hole.
Face it. The administration and legislators continue to breach their contract with Vermont citizens.
Brigham v. State, (1997)
“The State’s duty… is to provide, through public education, for the development of an educated citizenry capable of participating fully in a democratic society and competing successfully in the economy.”
How’s that working? The education monopoly they perpetuate, with its captured clientele, is forcing us to pay for their snake oil.
Think about it. We have a $2.7 billion education budget serving 72,100 K-12th grade students and a bunch of 3, 4, and 5 year-old part-time Pre-K students. Meanwhile half of high school graduates can’t meet minimum grade level academic standards.
That’s not leadership. It’s a racket.
Rob and HJE are spot on; but additionally, prior green new steal money should be rolled back.
It appears not only Socialism has taken over Vermont, but also TDS
Being born during the Eisenhower administration, I have seen many new
Presidents coming and old ones going. Each and every time, the new one coming in has told us of the evils of the last one and the horrible and unconstitutional mistakes or laws the last one made. It’s endless and there is no one out there that has all the answers on how to run this country correctly or at least, fairly. Every person that ever comments on any web site, including me, feels that they are right in their assessment of the current situations and won’t change their minds. The Constitution gives the right to do so, therefore every one is right and every one is wrong depending on your perspective. We do need to try to save our state. A hard row to hoe but it has to be done. To hell with party affiliation, it’s a matter of survival.
Great comment Dan, The answer is to stop voting the Party Line and vote for the the person that makes the most sense to you as the voter and the direction you wish to head into
VDC readers should keep this in mind too, the buy line, ‘No New Taxes’, is in itself a deception. Vermont is already one of the highest taxed States in the U.S.. Even with ‘no new taxes’ we will still be paying for stuff we don’t receive.
In the education realm with which I’m familiar, the typical ploy continues.
Governor Scott threatens, in December, a 12% increase in education property taxes as his opening salvo. If Scott is true to every other time he (and the education establishment) uses this strategy, we will, in January, hear all about the hard work his administration and the legislature have done to lower taxes and that they’ve managed to decrease the proposed 2026-27 budget by 30%+-. All the while making sure all of Vermont’s children receive the education they need.
Think of it. They lowered the proposed education spending by 30%! How honorable of them?
So, instead of increasing a $2.7 billion budget by $324 million, they’re only going to raise their tax revenues by $226.8 million.
Meanwhile, enrollments continue to decline (even while they struggle to bring every ELL student (English Language Learner – now called Multilingual Learners) they can find into their fold. And, to add insult to injury, they count every ELL student as three students through their contrived ‘equalized enrollment’ smoke and mirrors.
Just check out Winooski’s public-school enrollments. While the Winooski district reports an ‘equalized enrollment’ of approximately 2180 students in its cost per student calculations, there are, in reality, fewer than 800 actual students enrolled there. That’s because Winooski has approximately 300 ‘Multilingual Learners’ in its schools – that’s about 40% of Winooski’s total enrollment.
And I suspect every department in Vermont’s government, listed above by Rob, uses a similar strategy. Again… it’s a racket!
Politicians can scram “No New Taxes” all they want but still take more money out of our pockets without being called out as liars, raising any existing tax is still satisfying these words since the are not ‘new’ taxes
I think the best example of this are the people here who rightfully howl about taxes but then crickets when it comes to the economy crippling tariffs that are the same thing
If the tariffs were crippling the economy, I would howl. But tariffs aren’t crippling the economy.
In fact, inflation was just reported to have dropped from 3% to 2.7% in the latest report. The trade deficit decreased from $59.3 billion in August to $52.8 billion in September, with exports increasing more than imports. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 64,000 jobs in November.
And the recent reports indicate that wages are increasing faster than inflation, with average weekly wages growing by 4.2% compared to an inflation rate of 2.7%, with wage gain still outpacing inflation for many workers.
Were there any job losses over the period? You bet. There are a lot of irrelevant government workers who have been laid off and are now looking for new jobs… jobs that are, hopefully, more worthwhile than trolling social media with their concerns about the economy.
Rob,
Just voting no can be an effective when voting on a school budget you feel is unaffordable. It certainly has worked at getting legilsators attention in the past when multimple school budgets are defeated.
However when governing, a blanket policy of no new taxes, either on a state or local level, does not allow the flexibility needed or the fact that some taxes many need to be increased, such as on electric vehicles that use our highways but do not contribue in a fair enough manner to the Highway Fund which is supported in a large part by the gas tax.
Also, with shared power, you cannot always get your way. Thanks to the veto proof margin provided by Republicans in the last election, Governor Scott has much more power and influence. One of the reasons the increase was in the yield was only 1.1% was Scott’s insistance the around 80 million in surplus be spent on reducing educational property taxes, not on new programs.
Scott is agan proposing that the surplus this year of 75 million be used to lower educational property tax increases. He is already getting push back from Democrats who want to spent the surplus elsewhere. Scott has said he will propose further reductions in educational spending in his budget address to bring the increase as close to zero as possible. This is the right course to take.
Does “the flexibility needed or the fact that some taxes many need to be increased”, include the flexibility needed when some taxes may need to be decreased?
In my district’s school choice tuitioning grades, for every student choosing an independent school instead of a public school, annual tuition costs decline by more than 30%.
Is this not “the right course to take”?
Been voting since 1971 and have yet to vote yes on the school budget the first time around.
I always vote ‘no’ in an attempt to have the boards go back and sharpen pencils