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West Virginia Gov. Justice outlines plan to eliminate income tax during State of the State Address


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2021 Feb 17, 7:37am   1,537 views  7 comments

by zzyzzx   ➕follow (5)   💰tip   ignore  

https://www.wvnews.com/news/wvnews/west-virginia-gov-justice-outlines-plan-to-eliminate-income-tax-during-state-of-the-state/article_24623ac2-75a8-560d-ab09-a2bb7247307e.html

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WV News) — Gov. Jim Justice outlined his plan to eliminate the state’s personal income tax during his State of the State Address Wednesday evening.

In order to replace the $2.1 billion received annually from the personal income tax, Justice said the state should raise its consumer sales tax by 1.5%, impose taxes on the purchase of tobacco products and soda, create a “tiered” system for severance tax collections, impose taxes on some professional services, and impose a wealth tax and make $25 million in budget cuts.

His plan would initially see personal income taxes cut in half for most West Virginians, Justice said.

“First of all, you take one bite of the elephant at time,” he said. “You cut the income tax on everybody in the state of West Virginia — except the super highest earners, and you cut theirs by a third. But you cut everybody else’s by half right out of the gate.”

The state would still be receiving half of its usual personal income tax revenues during this first phase of the plan, Justice said.

The other half of the revenues would be made up by increasing the consumer sales tax and imposing other new taxes, Justice said.

“I think what we’re going to have to do that’s going to hit the everyday man is we’re going to have to raise sales taxes by 1.5% if we’re going to eliminate our income tax,” he said.

“We need to look at putting an additional tax on cigarettes and soda in trying to make us healthier and better, and that could be a source of revenue for us.”

A tax on “professional services” should also be created, along with a “wealth tax,” Justice said, describing the latter as “a tax on those who are very, very well-to-do who can pay just a little bit extra.”

The state also should make about $25 million in budget cuts, Justice said.

“The cuts need to be in my opinion very minuscule,” he said. “You do not need to cut to the bone, but you do need to make some cuts. By minuscule, I mean very minuscule — $25 million of cuts will get you there.”

Tiering severance tax collections on oil, gas and coal also will bring in some replacement revenues, Justice said.

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1   zzyzzx   2021 Feb 17, 7:39am  

If this passes, expect parts of MD and VA to attempt to join WV, since it's it's been talked about previously....
2   zzyzzx   2021 Feb 17, 7:39am  

Mississippi and Louisiana also considering the change.
3   Patrick   2021 Feb 18, 1:10am  

zzyzzx says
In order to replace the $2.1 billion received annually from the personal income tax, Justice said the state should raise its consumer sales tax by 1.5%, impose taxes on the purchase of tobacco products and soda, create a “tiered” system for severance tax collections, impose taxes on some professional services, and impose a wealth tax and make $25 million in budget cuts.


The right answer is Henry George's land value tax. Taxing land does not discourage the production of land, because there isn't any.

The wrong answer is to tax commerce. It discourages commerce.

Taxing income from work is also wrong, because that discourages work.

Not sure about taxing income from investments.
4   Booger   2021 Feb 18, 4:20am  

Patrick says
Not sure about taxing income from investments.


It discourages investments. Just think about it. All investments have some risk. Are you always going to take that risk if you are going to get heavily taxed on any gain.
6   WookieMan   2021 Feb 19, 8:31am  

Patrick says
The wrong answer is to tax commerce. It discourages commerce.

Hurts poor people the most too. I always laugh when Cook County would increase the sales taxes. And then the people that it hurts the most keeps voting these idiots in. They don't realize that a sales tax increase to those above average and wealthy is like dropping $100 bill out of your pocket once or twice a year. You don't like it, but it's gone, oh well.

That's a week worth of groceries from some people. And they voted to have that taken from them.
7   HeadSet   2021 Feb 19, 9:26am  

WookieMan says
That's a week worth of groceries from some people. And they voted to have that taken from them.

True, but are those poor folks welfare recipients?

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