NJ Governor vs. Senate President: Either Way, We Lose (Opinion)
That's right. Both sides of the nearly $37 billion budget battle want to raise your taxes. It's not about whether your taxes should go up, it's about which taxes and how much. The Governor wants to restore the sales tax to 7% and levy a higher tax on Millionaires. The Senate President wants to put an increase in taxes for businesses in NJ. On both ends, if either men wins, we all lose.
The business tax will adversely impact approximately 2,000 NJ businesses who are currently contributing about billions of dollars to the NJ economy. The so-called millionaires tax will end up hurting about 5,000 businesses filing as individuals compromising another billion in economic activity. The Governor loves the idea of a millionaires tax because it's a great sound bite. Make the rich pay their fair share! And since he's one of the richest in the state, it seems fair, because he'll pay more....right? Problem is the entire charade will hurt all of us. Raising more taxes on the highest taxed people in the nation is not only bad for business, it won't solve the problem.
Sweeney's solution isn't much better regarding raising the business tax. His proposal would make us literally the highest tax state for businesses to operate. How is that helpful to anyone? I had a good conversation with Michele Siekerka from NJBIA today to discuss how much worse both budgets will make our economy further damaging the effort to make NJ affordable for working and middle class families. More to come as the legislature will be meeting on Saturday to avoid a shutdown. I'd like to see if they'll adopt even one of the sound proposals I've recommended to get us out of this mess. Still waiting....
Bill Spadea is on the air weekdays from 6 to 10 a.m., talkin’ Jersey, taking your calls at 1-800-283-1015. Tweet him @NJ1015 or @BillSpadea. The opinions expressed here are solely those of Bill Spadea.
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