This week the Senate introduced SJR 9, or the Just Cut Taxes and Win Amendment. SJR 9 would call for a constitutional amendment to eliminate the business personal property tax for certain industries. As you might tell from the title of the resolution, this is the state’s latest effort to spur job and economic growth…
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Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that states could remove some low-income adults from receiving Medicaid coverage if they are not working more than part-time or participating in work-related activities. This is a sharp departure from prior administrations that have rejected so-called “work requirement” waivers from states because it doesn’t align with…
Previous blog posts have covered West Virginia’s proposal to modify its Medicaid program through a request to the federal government to waive certain requirements of the law, known as a 1115 waiver. As the posts explained, the proposed 1115 waiver would result in decreased access to health care with fewer West Virginians covered, ultimately harming…
In November 2017, the WV Department of Health and Human Resources announced that they plan to modify the state's Medicaid program through a waiver under Section 1115 of the Social Security Act in 2018. DHHR stated that they plan to align the proposed “work requirements” with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that imposes time limits or restrictions on unemployed adults that…
The final tax bill that Republicans in Congress are poised to approve would provide most of its benefits to high-income households while raising taxes on many low- and middle-income West Virginians. While the bill goes into effect in 2018, many of the provisions directly affecting low- and middle-income individuals and families would all expire after…
The Senate Finance Committee has amended the GOP tax bill, making significant changes to the bill, including the repeal of the individual mandate from the Affordable Care Act. The legislation is described as tax reform but would cut hundreds of billions of dollars in health care spending. The provision recently added to the legislation to repeal…
The U.S. Senate has released their version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. While the bill has some differences from the version released by the House, its overall affect is largely the same, with the benefits heavily favoring the wealthy. The Senate's tax bill would raise taxes on some families while giving large tax cuts…
The House of Representatives has formally introduced its tax reform bill, The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The bill, like the tax reform framework it is based on, heavily favors the wealthy. The bill includes some provisions that raise taxes and some that cut taxes, so the net effect for any particular family's federal tax bill depends…
The tax framework released last week by President Trump and Republican congressional leaders would result in huge tax cuts for the wealthiest households, while offering little to middle- and lower-income families. In West Virginia, the richest one percent of residents would receive 39.1 percent of the tax cuts within the state under the framework in 2018, according to…
The Bureau of Business and Economic Research at West Virginia University released their annual Economic Outlook Report for the state earlier this month. According to the report’s forecast, West Virginia is expected to experience modest job growth, with employment forecasted to grow at an average rate of 0.7 percent per year for the next five years. That’s…