Democrats Poised to Pass $600 Million Tax Increase
- Wednesday, March 25, 2009, 4:20
- Iowa
- 467 views
- 2 comments
Democrat leaders in the Iowa House and Iowa Senate, along with Governor Culver are all in agreement that they want to prevent Iowans from ducting all of their tax payments to the federal government on state income tax returns. This is commonly referred to as federal deductibility.
The removal of this deduction means a tax increase on Iowans to the tune of $600 million.
The move comes just days after the Revenue Estimating Conference told lawmakers that they need to cut an additional $130 million from the current budget. Making matters worse, the state has to deal with a $1.1 billion gap between expenses and revenues over the next 15 months. Many believe that Democrat legislative leaders are making a money grab to help solve the huge budget mess they have created by overspending.
In an interview with Mike Glover or the Associated Press, Speaker of the Iowa House, Pat Murphy said, “Ending the deductions would bring in hundreds of millions of dollars that would enable the state to reduce tax rates for most Iowans.” In other words, Murphy wants to raise taxes to lower taxes.
Ed Failor, Jr., President of Iowans for Tax Relief, told The Iowa Republican, “Be critical of what you hear come out of their mouths. They will talk about rate reduction, equity, and revenue neutrality. It is all a smoke screen for a $600 million tax increase on all Iowans.”
Failor states that by eliminating federal deductibility, Democrats will hurt lower and middle income Iowans who rent their homes, as these people can’t deduct mortgage interest or property taxes. Failor claimed that removing federal deductibility would “take away their largest tax deduction.”
Failor and Iowans for Tax Relief are ready to unleash a direct mail, radio, and television campaign to urge Iowans to help them stop the Democrats’ latest tax increase.
“It is incomprehensible that Democrat leaders are willing to force all Iowans to pay a tax on a tax. These Democrats find it reasonable for the State of Iowa to tax you on the money the federal government withheld from your paycheck – money you never had in your wallet,” Failor concluded.
Click here to read Failor’s op-ed on federal deductibility from earlier this month.
About the Author
Craig Robinson has written 700 stories on this site.
Craig Robinson serves as the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheIowaRepublican.com. Prior to founding Iowa's largest conservative news site, Robinson served as the Political Director of the Republican Party of Iowa during the 2008 Iowa Caucuses. In that capacity, Robinson planned and organized the largest political event in 2007, the Iowa Straw Poll, in Ames, Iowa. Robinson also organized the 2008 Republican caucuses in Iowa, and was later dispatched to Nevada to help with the caucuses there. Robinson cut his teeth in Iowa politics during the 2000 caucus campaign of businessman Steve Forbes and has been involved with most major campaigns in the state since then. His extensive political background and rolodex give him a unique perspective from which to monitor the political pulse of Iowa.
2 Comments on “Democrats Poised to Pass $600 Million Tax Increase”
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Isn’t it May yet and time for these thieves to go home? Don’t they ever worry about ways to cut spending instead of spending all their time plotting how to raise taxes?
Failor is right about one thing—the mortgage interest deduction is unfair to renters. We should eliminate that also. It is one of the features of the argument that a house is an investment (“you can take it off your taxes!”). That helped trap lots of people in the housing bubble.
A house is not an investment. It is consumption that requires maintenance. The bubble is burst. Cleanse this from the tax code.