Too many working families in West Virginia are paid low wages and have trouble making ends meet, with basic living expenses stretching family budgets beyond their limits. With tax overhaul a main topic in front of the legislature, a bottom-up tax cut like a state Earned Income Tax Credit that would help people who work…
Tax and Budget
This week the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report on the state of K-12 funding since the Great Recession. The main takeaway from the report was that most states are providing less support per student for K-12 now than before the recession, and that some states are still cutting K-12 funding, eight…
This fall our members of Congress will have the chance to show that they support hard-working low-income families. PDF of report. Important provisions of two anti-poverty, pro-work policies, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC), are set to expire unless Congress acts to save them. By doing so, Congress will…
With tax reform on the West Virginia Legislature’s agenda, attention has once again turned to West Virginia’s business personal property tax. In October, the conservative anti-tax group The Tax Foundation testified to the Select Joint Committee on Tax Reform that moving away from the business personal property tax would help attract businesses and grow the…
Overhauling West Virginia’s tax system is on the agenda of the leadership of the West Virginia legislature. As citizens and stakeholders of West Virginia, we appreciate this effort and the thoroughness with which the Joint Select Committee on Tax Reform has investigated the many issues involved. Read PDF. A diverse coalition of organizations that cares…
Several years ago, West Virginia enacted a series of large business tax cuts with the belief that they would help grow the state’s economy. Today policymakers are promoting that same theory, even though the previous tax cuts have largely failed to put West Virginia on a path to prosperity, with the state losing thousands of…
On Monday, the Joint Select Committee on Taxation met again to discuss revising our state's tax system. The focus of this meeting was on local property taxation, especially as it impacts the coal and natural gas industries. During the meeting, John Mairs, a lawyer for the coal industry, stated that he "would love to have…
While the last post found that state income taxes have little or no impact on interstate migration, there is also little evidence that slashing or eliminating the personal income tax is a surefire way to boost economic growth in the Mountain State. Most of the states that have followed this path recently have not experienced…
In the last post, I gave an overview of West Virginia's personal income tax and how it is an important and progressive way to fund state investments in K-12 education, higher education, and other important public structures. In this post, I want to tackle misleading information surrounding the argument to cut or abolish state personal…
Monday, the Joint Select Committee on Tax Reform met again to continue the discussion of the proposed overhaul of West Virginia's tax system. The committee heard from economists from WVU and Marshall University, as well as representatives from the conservative Tax Foundation, the Council on State Taxation, and the National Conference of State Legislatures. The…