Blog

February 14, 2012 by Ted Boettner
Getting the Story Right: Mineral Taxation in Wyoming and West Virginia

Last week, I was asked to present before the Senate Economic Development Committee on our projected estimates regarding S.B. 182 - which creates the WV Future Fund proposed by Senate President Jeff Kessler. During the meeting, Mark Muchow, the Deputy Secretary of the WV Department of Revenue, also presented the committee with a history of…

Read More
January 25, 2012 by Sean O'Leary
Extending Payroll Tax Cut and Unemployment Benefits Thousands of West Virginians

Last night, in his State of the Union address, President Obama asked Congress to pass an extension of the payroll tax cut without delay. The original tax cut, which reduced the employee share of Social Security taxes, expired at the end of 2011 and was extended for two months. Along with the payroll tax cut, Congress…

Read More
January 11, 2012 by Sean O'Leary
Marcellus Revenues Already Offsetting Business Tax Cuts

We've brought up creating some sort of trust fund with the state's severance tax revenue time and time again, so it was good to read about state Republican legislators talking about a severance tax fund in the Gazette this morning. However, it was disappointing to see that their proposal was to use a severance tax fund to…

Read More
January 6, 2012 by Sean O'Leary
Inequality Driven by Growing Shift Toward Capital Income

When we last talked about growing income inequality, the CBO had released a report showing that incomes for the richest households in the U.S. have been growing much faster than the incomes of the poor and middle class. Another study, this time from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), has confirmed that income inequality is on the…

Read More
January 2, 2012 by Ted Boettner
Business Tax Cuts – No Free Lunch

While the state should be doing all that it can to stimulate economic growth and jobs, cutting business taxes is an inefficient, regressive and poor choice for creating broadly shared prosperity. As Sean has pointed out, there are much better ways to accomplish this goal. As AP points out today, the corporate net income tax…

Read More
December 20, 2011 by Ted Boettner
Government Played Critical Role in Shale Gas Boom

Today, the Washington Post had an insightful op-ed highlighting the large and critical role federal spending played in the boom in shale gas drilling: Many often point to the shale gas revolution as evidence that the private sector, in response to market forces, is better than government bureaucrats at picking technological winners. It's a compelling story, one that…

Read More
December 19, 2011 by Sean O'Leary
Will the Business Personal Property Tax Deter a Cracker Plant?

Today's Daily Mail had an article about a proposed tax incentive designed to lure a potential "ethane cracker" to West Virginia. The proposal would reduced the assessment rate for property taxes from 60% to 5% for the cracker facility. This would dramatically lower the facility's property tax burden, to the tune of about $500 million over the next…

Read More
December 19, 2011 by Ted Boettner
OPEB Cap Costs Public Employees $5 billion

In his column this morning Phil Kabler briefly noted that the result of capping the state's contribution to retiree health insurance was "that the burden was shifted onto current and future retirees." This is something I wrote about last week, so it was nice to see this basic point acknowledged in print. Another point that has…

Read More
December 7, 2011 by Ted Boettner
Solving the OPEB Problem is in Reach

Last night the Charleston Area Alliance hosted a discussion between Senator Brooks McCabe, PEIA director Ted Cheatham, and yours truly on how to address the state's growing OPEB (other post-employment benefits) liability. As readers may know, we published a detailed report on how the state should handle this problem back in January. I do not…

Read More