One year after celebrating the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, the West Virginia Coal Association, apparently unhappy with the results of the "most impactful decision to date for the nation’s energy security and stability," is back asking for more, once again calling for a reduction in the coal severance tax. The Coal Association argues that…
Tax and Budget
Last Spring, Governor Justice formed the West Virginia PEIA Task Force which was set up to find a long-term solution to the issues facing the West Virginia Public Employees Insurance Agency, namely the growing cost of health care for teachers and other public employees. The deadline for the task force's recommendations was this week, and while…
Earlier this month, a report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy showed how the federal tax cut bill signed last year by President Trump exacerbated the growing racial wealth gap in the country. By gearing the bulk of its tax cuts to the very wealthy, who are overwhelmingly white, the Tax Cuts and…
A new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and Prosperity Now takes a look at the federal tax cut bill passed by Congress and signed into law last year by President Trump and its impact on growing the racial wealth gap. Previous reports have shown that the tax cuts in the Tax Cuts…
On October 1, the West Virginia Tax Department issued guidelines and outlined intentions to start collecting sales taxes from remote internet retailers on January 1, 2019. As Charleston Gazette-Mail reporter Phil Kabler recently noted, this was a sharp policy shift. Nearly four months ago, Governor Justice proclaimed he had no intentions to allow the state to collect online sales taxes and that,…
On October 30, 2018, Executive Director Ted Boettner presented at the 69th Annual Meeting of the West Virginia Tax Institute in Morgantown, WV on the advantages and disadvantages of business tax incentives. Read presentation.
State and local tax systems can be effectively used to boost economic opportunity, create broadly shared prosperity and build equitable state economies. But in most states, including West Virginia, tax systems are upside down and are making inequality worse, as a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) shows. The ITEP report examines the state…
The lowest-income West Virginians pay 21 percent more in taxes as a percent of their income compared to the state's wealthiest residents, according to a new study released today by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) and the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. The study, Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in…
West Virginia's inadequate public investment in higher education over the last decade has contributed to rising tuition prices, often leaving students with little choice but to take on more debt or give up on their dreams of going to college, according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report released today. The problem is especially serious…
A decade since the Great Recession, state spending on higher education has yet to recover from years of deep cuts, including in West Virginia, according to a new report released today from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. West Virginia was one of 45 states that spent less per student in the 2018 school year than in 2008.…