Maine Center for Economic Policy: Statement on Gov. LePage’s Proposal to Seek a Ballot Initiative to Reduce Maine’s Income Tax to 4 Percent by 2021
ITEP Work in ActionThe non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that Mainers with annual income above $175,000 would receive almost 50 percent of the benefits from this massive tax cut. The top 1 percent of Mainers with income greater than $390,000 would get an average tax cut of over $21,000 while the 20 percent of Mainers with income less than $23,000 will get an average tax cut of just $14. Ultimately any benefit middle- and low-income Mainers receive from this proposal will quickly disappear in the face of property and sales tax increases required to pay for eliminating Maine’s income tax.