Remember when Vinny Prieto promised us a sales tax cut next year if we'd just let him hike the gas tax this year? And remember how that turned out to be a big fat lie?
Well, Vinny's back, this time with Steve Sweeney in tow, and boy oh boy do they have a deal for us! Is it a good deal? Bwahahahahaha!
The joint proposal would gradually eliminate the Estate Tax, increase a popular tax credit for the working poor, raise the tax exemption for retirement and pension income, provide a small tax deduction for spending on gas taxes and create a tax exemption for veterans.
The tax cuts are designed to offset a new 23 cent per gallon increase on gasoline sold in New Jersey that would boost New Jersey's second-lowest in the nation gas tax, 14.5 cents per gallon, to 37.5 cents. According to lawmakers, that will fund a 10-year, $20 billion Transportation Trust Fund.
So we get boned up the gas tank in exchange for what? Crumbs?
I think I'll curb my enthusiasm.
The latest, bicameral offering phases out the estate tax, raising the threshold from $675,000 to $2 million on Jan. 1, to $5.4 million in 2018, and eliminating it entirely in 2020.
Lawmakers have said they expect the estate tax cut will be transformational for New Jersey, which has the lowest threshold in the U.S. It was also considered key for recruiting Republican support for the gas tax hike.
The deal will raise the Earned Income Tax Credit to 40 percent of the federal credit and increase fivefold the amount of retirement and pension income excluded from gross income taxes.
A tax deduction once included in the Senate bill is making a comeback. It will allow New Jerseyans making up to $100,000 to deduct up to $500 of their gas tax costs. And there's a brand new $3,000 personal exemption for honorably discharged veterans.
Their estate tax phaseout won't survive the next gubernatorial election, for the same reasons the sales tax cut was never going to be enacted. Any "Republican" whose vote is swayed by this charade is an idiot.
Raising the EITC is just more wealth redistribution, ie payments to poor inner-city Democrats to ensure their votes don't wander off in search of Donald Trump in November. Ditto for that handout to the AARP set.
And then in what's gotta be the biggest insult of all, they're flat out declaring that anyone earning more than $100K a year is rich and underserving of any tax cut at all. In other words, typical Democratic Party class warfare.
The only real cut in the list is the $3,000 personal exemption for veterans, and that's probably only in there because Prieto and Sweeney don't actually know any vets, and so they're thinking hardly anyone in the state will take them up on the offer.
No thanks fellas. Your plan stinks.
Cut spending. Use that to finance your transportation boondoggles. But then,
as Glenn Reynolds is fond of saying, that would provide you guys with
insufficient opportunities for graft.
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