Happy New Year!
by Rob Roper
The Vermont Legislature returns to Montpelier on January 3rd, and the Democrat Supermajority’s first order of businesses in the House is a 10 percent state income tax hike. Of course, the bill is titled “S.56 – An act relating to child care and early childhood education” because, you know, “for the children,” but….
Sections 24 -27 lay it out clear that should S.56 become law, income tax rates will increase by bracket from 3.65% to 3.8% (a 9 percent increase) on those earning $42,150 or less, from 6.6% to 7.3% (an 11 percent increase) on those earning between $42,151 and $102,200, from 7.6% to 8.3% (a nine percent increase) on those earning between $102,201 and $213,150, and from 8.75% to 9.6% (a 10 percent increase) on those earning more than that.
According to the Joint Fiscal Office, this would mean an overall income tax increase on Vermonters of $125.4 million in 2025.
Oh, but they’re not done yet! This bill calls for another income tax increase – a “Supplemental Personal Income Tax Increase” — in 2027 by brackets to 3.8%, 7.5%, 8.55%, and 10.05%, which would suck an additional $57.5 million out of working Vermonters’ wallets in 2028 on top of that.
What’s all this for, you ask? The complete hostile takeover of pre-kindergarten childcare – mostly small businesses run by women – by the bloated, corrupt, inefficient, ineffective but politically powerful public-school monopoly.
Yes, the same folks who for multiple decades were failing to teach our kids to read properly, are locking special needs students in “blue rooms” when they’re not physically pinning them to the floor, who are responsible for over a dozen years’ worth of declining test scores, walked out on kids and families during COVID, and who are more interested in cramming woke ideology down students’ throats than teaching them how to balance a checkbook (and here I think we can see why)… want to start the process of miseducating and indoctrinating our kids a few years earlier. And they’re generously willing to perform this service for just a few hundred million dollars a year. Maybe make it half a billion when all is said and done. Nice round number.
So, if you thought the new 0.44 percent payroll tax passed just last year that will start sucking $120 million directly out of working Vermonters’ paychecks this July, plus the anticipated 18.5 percent property tax increase would be enough to cover this early childcare nut, it seems you were grossly mistaken. After all, it’s not cheap supplying taxpayer funded childcare subsidies to families earning 575% of the federal poverty level. Which means, yes, if this bill becomes law Vermonters in the lowest income bracket will be paying 9 percent more in income taxes to provide benefits for people earning over $200,000 a year. Quit complaining poor folks. That’s “your fair share” according to the lingo.
2024 is an election year, and just so you know, S.56 was sponsored by seventeen of the 23 Democrat Senators, and passed the senate last year on a roll call vote of 24-6. Every Democrat voted for it, and one Republican.
Now it’s in the House, and you have a chance to let your Representatives know what you think about all this. Please do!
Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.
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Categories: Commentary, Legislation, State Government
Retired. Fixed income. Just cannot afford this. For the Love of God, legislature, RELENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If Republicans can’t make any headway this year…it really is hopeless.
What? Where? There are no republicans in Vermont. Hasn’t been since WHITE CHRISTMAS was filmed.
On one hand they say that we have a housing crisis and we don’t have enough affordable housing available and in the same breath they increase taxes $200+ a month on every homeowner/landlord/business owner.
It would be laughable if it weren’t true.
There isn’t enough housing to accommodate the endless streams of out-of-state homeless, addicted, mentally ill indigents, not enough housing to accommodate the thousands of migrants from third world countries they are ushering in, not enough housing to accommodate the thousands of ILLEGAL immigrants their DNC is disseminating throughout this country.
The “housing” they unrelentingly promote is NOT for you or likely anyone you closely associate with. It is to Communize the US and install the one-party, “liberal world order” Biden has actually spoken of. Vermont is simply a PROVING GROUND; it’s small, it has accepted & embraced socialists as “leaders” for years, and its radicalized college students all vote the big “D” in elections.
The Blood of Patriots & Tyrants. That is all that remains and thus far, it isn’t panning out. Looks like Thomas Jefferson has been defeated.
Again, Kathleen: If you want to ask the hard question – consider yesterday’s report on Vermont Public – while Vermont has the highest per-capita homelessness rate in the country, Vermont also provides the most per capita support to the homeless community.
In other words, there appears to be a correlation between the amount of homeless support VT taxpayers provide and the number of homeless folks who come here.
The more we pay, the more we will pay.
Exactly H. Jay Eschelman. It’s the free lunch principal… Bought and paid for by Vermonters and federal subsidies so that we have to follow more federal rules.
Stop paying taxes. All of this goes away.
The golden eggs are no more. This goose has neen plucked, and f_____ and is now being cooked. Have fun picking our meat out from between your teeth with our rib bones. Congratulations you socialist pigs.
“Welcome to Communist Vermont.” I hope the legislators are setting aside enough funding to switch out all the state signs that merely state “Welcome to Vermont”.
Nimrod, unethical, amoral, constitution-destroying radicals.
Operation Upend Every Couch Cushion and Raid Every Vehicle Caddy has commenced. The Vermont Legislature Tin Cup initiative is hereby extended indefinately! All spare change will be seized upon discovery.
Be it income tax, or any other taking of personal property, the issue we face is a flaw in our democratic system. It’s often referred to as the ‘tyranny by the majority’. When 51% of the electorate realize they have the wherewithal to take property from the remaining 49%, be it through any form of debatable logic one can imagine, it is nothing short of ‘taxation without representation’ for the minority.
Today, in Vermont, we find ourselves in precisely this circumstance. Arguably, more than forty percent of Vermont’s workforce derives the majority of its income from the tax subsidized sectors of healthcare, education, and government. In fact, the majority of new jobs are in these sectors.
We can let our representatives know how we think until we are blue in the face. But they are not going to listen. Their livelihood relies on their continued subversion. And they justify their actions as they ‘torment us for our own good’ …and ‘torment us without end … with the approval of their own conscience.’
The short-sightedness of their philosophy and actions cannot be exaggerated. Because the only recourse, the only result, is that, in the final analysis, they will be the only people left to pay for their indiscretions. Ironically, this tyranny is precisely what Marx described in his treatise. Marx simply misunderstood who the true oppressors were.
The only way to remedy this circumstance is to take a position that cuts off the head of the snake. With regard to income tax, there are two choices. Move out of Vermont to somewhere like Florida or South Dakota. With regard to Sales Tax, move to an underground economy, a black market. Or buy as little as possible.
But the real gorilla in the room is Property Tax.
“There are no state limits on property taxation in Vermont.”
https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/vt_nov_2016.pdf
Vermont is one of only four states with no state-imposed limitation on property tax rates, levies, or assessments (Paquin 2015).
There are, currently, two Property Tax Relief and Incentives.
The first is the education property tax adjustment program, also known as income sensitivity, because property taxes are adjusted based on the income of household members. The second is the homestead and renter property tax rebate. But the terms of these provisions are not only complicated, our legislators have been cutting back the relief for several years.
Here’s how the double-whammy scenario will play out. As your property taxes increase, the value of your property necessarily decreases, because the property value is offset by the cost of its maintenance.
Clearly, the only people who will be able to live in Vermont are those who can increase their pay with impunity (education, healthcare, and government workers). Until they are the last property owners left in the State. And because they won’t be able to afford their own services, they too will be driven away. Then, the only people who can afford to live here will be the wealthy upper class with minimal support staff.
And just who do you think those support staff will be? Are you starting to get the idea of how this works?
Regarding the property tax adjustment program; it is a fiscal illusion used in municipal and school budget preparation to increase spending because so many believe most won’t pay the full price anyway. What we do see is increased spending with a decline in educational outcomes and municipal services.
Indeed. Especially given the increased school spending about to be imposed on us this year.
Mr. Eshelman is correct and sums up Vermont’s current state of distress in his first two paragraphs. Vermont has 40% of it’s workforce dependent upon government- be it directly a government job , NGO, 501-C3 org. or other entity, these jobs are dependent upon government mandate, regulation and spending to exist. How exactly would you expect these folks to vote? Why possibly would they want to change the status quo? Change to Vermont’s political landscape is generations off, if possible at all.
Don’t worry Jay, they’re going to have a statewide property tax system by 2025 or 2027 I forget…
I’m sure they’ll “fix” it then.
Well, as long as these tax hikin’ radical, constitution destroying, Communist legislators don’t like Donald Trump(!) – THAT’S the MAIN cause of concern here, right Mr. Dame & Co., heads of the VT GOP?
Indoctrinating children is extremely expensive. I have read many UNESCO documents and SEL programs serve one purpose, it is a tool to program children to serve the collectivist agenda of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. One of which is equity, to create more equal outcomes within and among nations. The OECD has stated that through partners like the World Bank and others, it will circumvent the culture of each member nations via its stakeholders like the NEAF and Harvard through the creation of resources like the K-12 Sustainable Development Goals teacher workbook. The NEA even has a website on global citizenship. The desired outcome is global equity-based socialism. A collectivist utopia.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/23/un-program-teaching-kids-social-and-emotional-learning-actually-seeks-to-kill-their-individualism/
If the Republicans are going to make any headway;
1. they are going to have to put forward some candidates (like actually breathing)
2. get off reproductive issues. I know it’s a moral issue and I agree. but is it better to lose and be right or at least have a seat at the table.
This is all true. On just about every other major issue Democrats are way out of step with public opinion (taxes, crime, parental rights, etc.) Even maybe in Vermont.
Fools…(No disrespect intended) and their money (freedoms) are soon parted.
Throw the bums out!
history lesson////remember when the house and senate kissed the loggers off in the northeast kingdom/// remember all the log trucks on state street in front of the state house protesting/// remember the car on the flatbed truck /// remember the name of the house members car the logger bought before the protest///remember the protesters swinging the slug hammer smashing the car into little pieces///remember the crying and fear in the statehouse that the loggers would come for them with chainsaws and axes/// guess what it never happened/// the loggers cleaned up all the mess and went home ///question/// what was the house members name///
to raise taxes in one of the most heavily taxed states is ridiculous. this is what happens with one party rule.
Soooo……we get to pay MORE taxes on our limited retirement income that we already paid taxes on? When are we going to have a Tea party because of being taxed without representation?
As a retired person who actually planned his retirement, I pay zero in federal and state income taxes. My property taxes on my 3br house in vermont are the same as the studio condo I used to own in Ct…….but I do enjoy reading these apoplectic comments.
I have said it before, but what the heck, I will say it again. I am a third generation Vermonter. I love this state, but the Progressive / Socialist- Communist and far leaning left Democrats (in Montpeculier) really don’t care that there are some Vermont residents (including myself) that can’t afford to live in this state anymore. I am being forced out of the state I was born, out of the county I was born, and out of my home. While this is going on, they will offer more and more free housing to people who don’t work (yet are able to work) and let Vermont residents pay for this, with no accountability for the freeloaders to get a job. There isn’t a business I see that isn’t advertiseing “HELP WANTED”. The jobs are there, but the freeloaders know the braniacs in Montpeculier will find a way to give them everything for free at Vermonter’s (with jobs) paying the expense. SO . . . I must move to another state to survive ❗
Well bless your little heart.. That’s one of the most arrogant and condescending comments I’ve read on this page.
no one answered the logger question ///we need more loggers in the statehouse and less loafers/// at least at the end of the day the logger has produced some thing of value//
Ladies and gentlemen…I present to you, their one and only skill set: raising taxes.
Spending our money
And aren’t the progressive liberal democrat legislators, who claim they work on behalf of Vermonters year round, trying to give themselves a pay raise that would be very close to an annual salary ? Is calling them stupid and greedy considered ‘demeaning?’
This is true although the story seems to be buried for now! Yes ! The legislature just introduced a bill today to give themselves a substantial pay raise!! I give up!! They get help with the expenses of living in Vermont but us on fixed incomes can just go without, we have cut down on everything else .. not much left!! legislature, YOU ARE HURTING THE PEOPLE OF VT!!! Hear me now???
h. j. e///. you forgot current use tax on large land tracts ///
Current Use is a different animal. It requires a reciprocal investment by the land owner, first to take the land out of development, and second, to make a personal investment in the land and agricultural management plan required for participation and approved by the local State forester. In some cases, the landowner’s required investment nearly offsets the now marginal tax benefit received.
And, yes, in some cases Current Use is abused – as is the case with almost any government managed program.
But Current Use is a whole other ball game from the confiscation of property through taxation.
Many have something to Say .
Nobody recognizes not one of our Legislature, is in Fact Legally Elected since 2020 .
https://frankspeech.com/LetMyPeopleGo
Promo Code ( Mike )
Gets 50 % off , watch and Share as many times as you wish .
Complaints are not Solutions
God bless ya all ,
Happy New Year 🎊🎊🎉🕛
Market price equilibrium would suggest, that the hidden tax (on the employer’s) payroll tax, will drive out remote worker opportunities. It’s bad enough companies are required to register with the state, and many companies don’t have the resources to deal with all the red tape to remote hire here. You’d think if they wanted more money, they would stop adding restrictions like taxes and registration. It’s fairly dumb to think that the only way to get more money is to increase taxes. Not that the constitution authorizes waste and destruction of wealth anyway. Didn’t Vermont make slavery illegal in the constitution too? We need a 90% tax on public servants.
thank you h. j. e. for the current use answer/// now tell me why the loggers had a protest/// and who was the representative/// this had to with property rights.///
correction ///this had to do with property rights ///also remember /// citizens for property rights//// property owners standing together/// this is in the history books.//
Tax and fee increases to force more Vermonters out to homelessness. Keep voting democRATS in, you may end up in a tent next to mine.
Taxes are really taxing the average person out of living in VT. As a native Vermonter, I am very concerned about raising taxes.
Donna Keefe Marzouk, Wilder,VT