Taxes That Fill Or Empty States’ Cookie Jars

Any wonder there’s a Tax-Cut Movement now raging in over 2 dozen states, while die-hard blue states keep raising taxes to fund black hole progressive ideas, then, try to impose wealth taxes to punish fleeing citizens?

As the recent WSJ “State Wealth-Tax Alliance” op ed noted, “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” That’s because “Democrats finally have a strategy to stop billionaires from fleeing high tax states: Block the escape routes” with “coordinated moves in progressive states to tax wealth.” As the editors mused, “the reforms aren’t likely to pass immediately,” let alone pass muster in the courts, “but they illustrate the increasingly open socialist goals of progressives and their public-union backers.” Meanwhile, a separate editorial says, “By year-end, about half of the states will have cut rates on income within three years.”

The good news, concluded the WSJ, is “there’s no end in sight” for the counter, tax-cutting trend, thereby “confirming we’re in a virtuous economic-political cycle.” Something about “competition” between states losing or winning citizens (and their tax revenues). Yet, in a way, ain’t it sad, that while some states have the wisdom to be perceived as being fiscally responsible with taxpayers’ money, others could care less … that is, until the cookie jar is almost empty?

Davd Soul