by Lake Champlain Chamber
Vermont is a high-tax state, the fourth highest, to be exact. However, it feels as if this year, we’re trying to take the title of the highest in almost every category.
Let’s take a look at what the Legislature may do this year.
First, let’s not forget that in July, you or your employees will start paying a 0.44% payroll tax, which will amount to $92 million in FY 26 as a result of last year’s legislation.
The House voted to create a new top marginal bracket for those making ~$410,000 ($500,000 married filing jointly), which is the highest marginal tax bracket for that income level in the U.S.
Property taxes are on a trajectory to increase by over 18% (though they can be as high as 30% in some districts) to make up the newly revised $197 million gap in the education fund.
However, the Legislature is looking to buy down that rate spike by likely levying new taxes on online services of all kinds, a 10% surcharge on short-term rentals, and possibly some tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.
The House has now passed a doubling of the property transfer tax.
No matter what is done, nationally, Vermont will rank as having the highest property taxes to fund the highest per-pupil education spending for below-average educational outcomes.
The House has also increased the fees on your investment or retirement accounts and will tax the communications infrastructure that you use.
While some might cheer for making corporations pay more in taxes by creating the highest corporate tax rate in the country and becoming an outlier by including FDII and GILTI income, this is just a reminder that consumers eventually end up paying that.
It’s not as if this is a new response, As one member of the Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Scott Beck, pointed out;
“In the last 10 years, personal income tax receipts in the state of Vermont have grown 54%, sales tax receipts have grown 65%, and property taxes have increased by 53%. Corporate income tax has nearly tripled in the last 10 years.”
Revenue to the State has been increasing but spending has been on a runaway train and when the Legislature has been forced with hard decisions, they’ve just looked to Vermonters to pay more, labeling anyone who pushes back as unwilling to pay their fair share.
The House passed its budget this week, and while the difference between the Governor’s proposed budget and the one the Democratic party-controlled Legislature might look close on dollar amounts, they are very far apart on content. Notably, the Governor did not propose all the taxes noted above.
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Categories: Legislation, News Analysis
Well, you elect these inept fools, and most probably can’t balance a checkbook, and you expect them to balance or control billions……………..
It’s all about being in control and doing what they want, your financial worries are not any of their concerns………….. Agenda-driven policies are being paid for by your taxes and they will get higher, we have fools in charge !!
Wake up people, you live within your means, Government should do the same, let’s get a balanced budget before these tax and spend freaks kill us all.
The government doesn’t have to live within their means…they have a currency printing press.
I’m just going to come out and say it:
Fsck these greedy b@stard$!
In my almost 35 years of living in Vermont, I’ve never seen a house or Senate plate on a rich person’s car until these last 4 or 5 years. The last one that stuck out to me was a really sweet Jaguar One that stuck out so much that I was envious of the person driving it until I realized that they worked in the house!
These people have gotten rich off our money and they don’t care how much you have to spend. If you’re not smart enough to vote them out, you deserve every penny stolen from you.
Moving forward everybody didn’t vote for them deserves to steal every penny from those who did. It’s far past any kind of tolerance for these “voters” if they even exist because I can’t find them….
I get that you don’t like paying taxes – who does? But no one is stealing from you and no one has gotten rich by serving in the part-time Vermont Legislature.
When in session, legislator salary is based on a weekly rate of $811.68. Mileage reimbursement is 65.5 cents per mile (tied to the federal rate). Per diem is divided between meals and lodging: meals: $69/day and lodging: $134/night.
And I’m really sorry that you found a legislator who owns a nicer car than you drive – that’s horrible and just so unfair.
Re: “…no one has gotten rich by serving in the part-time Vermont Legislature.”
Are Vermont legislators getting rich by serving in the legislature? Hard to say. But we do know this – Vermont lobbyists have gotten rich from the legislative actions they promoted.
“Here’s a tale of two enterprising young men from Vermont who hit the jackpot by selling their startup company to a larger one for $40 million.”
VPIRG Board President Duane Peterson and its Clean Energy Program director James Moore launched a startup called SunCommon after Peterson’s and Moore’s VPIRG coworkers raised $20 million (2009-2020) and devoted about half of that to persuading politicians and legislators to rig a bunch of special deals to create a hot market for a company like SunCommon to make money. Its annual revenues grew to $33.1 million (2020). And as a result of these legislative incentives, Peterson and Moore were able to sell the company for $40 million.
http://www.truenorthreports.com/mcclaughry-a-capitalist-success-story
There is also the example of one of Vermont’s members of the U.S. House receiving campaign donations from an energy company regulated by the PUC on which his wife serves as a commissioner. And let’s not forget the Jay Peak EB-5 scandal, or the Vermont Senator who funneled $200K in campaign cash to his wife’s nonprofit.
But the primary issue isn’t how rich these people are becoming. It’s how their legislative actions are affecting average Vermonters. I can’t blame Brian whoever-he-is for being suspicious, especially given some of the circumstances listed above. But more importantly, ask yourselves how the rest of us are doing? Grocery costs? Gasoline prices? Property Taxes? Electricity bills? And for what? The carbon neutral scam. The Covid scam? The stellar academic performance and psychological well-being of our K-12 students? What are we to think when a public-school board chair is employed by the Agency of Education? Should there be any concern over conflict of interest?
Mark Whoever-he-is seems to be advocating for these legislators, despite their poor performance. And the fact that one of them drives an expensive gasoline powered foreign sports car (hardly a carbon neutral practice) should give us pause. After all, what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander.
Mark let me respond to each of your rhtorical comments in order:
Taxation is theft.
It’s not their salary it’s the backend deals that are made that provide them with money, to even respond with this shows how little you understand of how this really works… It’s a you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours situation all the way around. Jay shows some excellent easy to understand examples below. (Thank you Jay)
Your last comment was shallow. I clearly said I was envious not jealous which just denotes that I would love to be able to drive that car often. It was mearly to point out that this is not a typical Vermonter and that I believe that he was able to afford that car because he has worked in the legislature undermining our rights for many years and has become an entrenched political entity that is sucking Vermonters dry.
It’s not that he owns it, it’s how I suspect he got it.
Like I said – no one is getting rich by serving in the VT Leg. And whether their performance is poor or spectacular is subjective. If you really want a change in direction, you can vote, donate to or volunteer to work for candidate who’s views you like, or run for office yourself – you know, democracy. What grownups shouldn’t do is embrace conspiracy theories, engage in name calling, threaten violence, or whine incessantly over differences that are simply a matter of opinion.
Brian – I understand the philosophical argument that taxation is a form of theft, based on the principle of consent and the definition of property rights. It’s a fringe view that I strongly disagree with but I get it, and it’s a discussion worth having. I just don’t think that legislators, or others, who don’t agree are “greedy b@stard$.” Tolerance for voters who disagree with you cuts both ways.
It’s pretty clear it’s poor and slipping every time they redo the statistics it gets worse. If you spent any time reading any Vermont statistics you’d know this to be true.
I think you only stay in a role like that for a long time if you are making money somehow… So I disagree with you and again plenty of evidence shown by Jay to support that theory, I’m sorry you can’t see this.
You are assuming I’ve never done any of those things… You know what they say about assuming….
There is no conspiracy I’m embracing here… Jay showed some receipts why don’t you prove that they aren’t? Please prove to me that they don’t hire their buddies to a climate council? Please prove that EB-5 wasn’t a giant money making scheme? Please prove that they aren’t making back room deals that make them money? It’s so ludacris to me that you would even have this view since it’s human nature to profit when you can….
As for voting, I vote against this every time I go, and every time I shake my head at what an easy to cheat system it is. No one can prove me wrong on that either and that is the actual problem with voting. They can’t prove that the election was legitimate because the rules and regulations surrounding it don’t allow for it. I’m sure you will call it a conspiracy too but it’s FACT.
“whine incessantly over differences that are simply a matter of opinion.”
Tell that to Grandma who’s been told by the legislature to just use an extra blanket when she’s cold as she eats cat food because she can’t afford to live anymore. If you think I’m kindding, that’s happening and these “simple matters of opinion” as you call them, have real world consequences and enough is enough.
“I understand the philosophical argument that taxation is a form of theft, based on the principle of consent and the definition of property rights. It’s a fringe view”
It’s not really a fringe view when an entire political party ensdorses it:
https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/is-taxation-theft
Is taxation a form of theft? This is, as always, another one of those nuanced questions.
Is taxation a form of theft? No. Taxes are not theft. Because I have the option to move to an area with more favorable tax rates if I don’t like the rates here. And, believe me, I’m seriously thinking about making that move, as many others have done.
Vermont isn’t quite the U.S.S.R. (although some of us are beginning to wonder about that), and we’re building border walls to keep people out (at least we ought to be doing so), not keep them in. If anyone wants to leave they can.
Furthermore, I don’t have to earn a lot of money or buy a lot of stuff, or pay taxes on the transactions. But I do have to be relatively resourceful. And most of us aren’t that resourceful – at least not yet.
If the government wants to take my property through eminent domain, it has to adhere to a specific constitutional process and pay me a fair price… if the government acts lawfully and isn’t corrupt. The proverbial ‘big if’.
Now, what happens if the government wants to use property taxes to fund its frivolities? Well, as long as property taxes are indexed to income, we can be more and more resourceful, earn less and less money, and pay less and less property tax. But if the government (again, the other ‘big if’) decides to detach property tax obligations from our income levels, then we have a real problem. Not only do we have to pay property tax on the appraised value of a property set by the State, if we have insufficient income to pay the arbitrary tax rate, the State will take everything we have.
When that happens, ‘Katie, bar the door’.
bribe//// something stolen//// money or a favor given or promised to a person to influence conduct//// webster dictionary ///// your bill of rights are being dismantled by these crooks/// total monetary destruction/// who is going to prosecute these crooks///
I’m not sure how this ended up underneath your post, sorry for that, It’s a lengthy conversation and I responded on a phone…. There’s no way to edit…
Re: “moving to another state that charges less on taxes does not remove said tax,..”
Brian: Moving to NH ‘removes’ the State Income Tax and Sales Tax. It’s less expensive to live in NH across the board.
Re: “in fact, most of the time you just end up paying more for other things that the government has like licenses and registrations and all these other unconstitutional acts.”
First of all, they aren’t unconstitutional acts. State Constitutions and the Federal Constitution authorize the raising of tax revenues. And, ‘in fact’, if you leave Vermont, the odds are you will pay less ‘for other things’, because 46 other States charge less tax than does Vermont.
Re: “In fact, in Vermont and Delaware, if you don’t live in that state, you still have to pay their state income tax if your company is registered there, and you don’t have the right to vote to change it.”
Same for NH folks working in MA. But no one is forcing you to work in VT, or DE, or MA. Choosing to live here is ‘voluntary’.
Article 9 of the VT Constitution states: “That every member of society hath a right to be protected in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and therefore is bound to contribute the member’s proportion towards the expence of that protection, ….”
It’s a quid pro quo agreement.
Re: “government is now saying You can’t grow your own food,…”
I don’t think so.
Re: “it’s not that I believe I should pay nothing in taxes,…”
There you have it. The problem isn’t that taxes are theft. You think (and I agree with you) that you pay too much in tax because you’re not receiving the customary level of ‘protection’ commensurate to the amount of tax you pay. Again, I refer to Article 9 of the VT Constitution. If there is any aspect of our current level of taxation that is unconstitutional it is this.
Not only is “every member… bound to contribute the member’s proportion towards the expence of that protection,…
… 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.”
If your elected officials have decided to rob you, don’t vote for them. Or sue them. Or move! … if you can find some other place on the planet that treats you more fairly. I hear FL, TX, NH, TN and SD are reasonable alternatives. In the meantime, I’m going economically dark. I’ll earn as little as possible, buy as little as possible, pay as little tax as possible, and try to out last the idiots in Montpelier until they bankrupt themselves… which I believe will be sooner than later.
Maybe it’s time to hit pause on all the social issue squabbling this election cycle and vote for a good ole fashion TAX REVOLT.
Have been in Vermont 54 yrs since birth and I’m leaving, Vermont has become a little California lead by a legislature of mostly non Vermonters who spend recklessly and raise taxes to pay for it.
Don’t mind paying into a system to finance our states infrastructure as long as it’s done responsibly. When Democrats get their fingers on our money it’s a free for all!.. Now my kids have no intention on living in Vermont where we built our home and raised them. Liberals destroy EVERYTHING they touch.. just a matter of time before Vermont follows California down the toilet bowl. At this point conservatives don’t want to live in this Communist state and for good reason they don’t run for office because the thought of working with progressives all day would drive anyone to drink. VOTE COMMON SENSE CONSERVATIVE IN EVERY ELECTION OR VERMONT IS FINISHED!