Tax Reform a Bad Deal
Published July 16, 2013
By Alexandra Sirota, Director, NC Budget and Tax Center,
July 16, 2013.
This is a bad deal for North Carolinians. What the Governor and Legislature agreed on won’t support job creation and it will drain resources needed to bolster our economy.
It puts at risk the ability to educate our children, care for our elders, keep our communities safe and support businesses, while failing to fix the problems with the state’s tax code. And, it gets rid of policies that work such as the Earned Income Tax Credit.
This is not a historic day for North Carolina; tax reform hasn’t been achieved. Instead, we’ve been handed a plan that will tarnish our state’s reputation as a leader in the South, a place where people want to live and businesses want to grow.
It is very likely that as a result of this failure to pursue real, comprehensive tax reform, state sales taxes and local property taxes will go up in the future. That’s what happened in every other Southern state that has personal and corporate income taxes that can’t keep up with growing public needs.
Our state cannot be competitive nationally or internationally with this reckless approach. It undermines the education of our workforce and support for research and innovation. The prospects of an ongoing race to the bottom for North Carolina now are all too real.
- See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2013/07/15/statement-from-alexandra-sirota-budget-tax-center-director-on-the-tax-deal/#sthash.RI1ifptR.dpuf
July 16, 2013 at 9:07 am
Ken Lang says:
I wish I had this gal's predictive insight; I'd be really, really wealthy! She fails to note that NC is already not competitive under the hodge-podge tax code that Democrats have crafted in the last decades, then notes with no evidence that changes will further deteriorate NC competitiveness. I choose the wait and see approach; see what happens and if these changes don't work then fix it. The bottom line is that someone is finally trying to do something rather than maintaining a failed status quo.
July 16, 2013 at 2:36 pm
Johnny Hiott says:
I fail to see how eliminating the mis-named "earned income credit" has anything to do with educating children. In as much as it is nothing but welfare by another name. It pays people to have more children they cannot afford to raise. Futhermore if it is desired to stop futher increases in local and state taxes that can be achieved easily. Eliminate government, stop cities from the idiotic projects like in Statesville NC where they have taken wide streets and narrowed them to two lanes for the specific purpose of discouraging trucks from using them. They seem to forget the trucking industry is filled with taxpayers who paid for the streets to begin with ! Municipal governments would be a good place to start mental health care improvments as they most all would make excellent case studies.
