The Free Press: An Eerily Familiar Tax Reform Plan, with Some Big Revisions

But in the end, the governor’s budget is just a proposal and it will be up to the Legislature to negotiate a final plan. In the coming months, Democrats and Republicans will pore over hundreds of pages of line items and hold public hearings under intense lobbying from various interest groups desperately trying to protect their sacred cows. But Piotti said there are benefits to having a Republican administration put something forward this time while making many of the same arguments Democrats made five years ago. Nevertheless, it will take a lot more analysis to determine who will see the most benefit from the much-hyped $300 million tax cut. As a new report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy finds, Mainers earning less than $64,700 per year pay an average of 9.3 percent of their household income to taxes, while top the 5 percent of earners (with incomes over $214,800 per year) pay only about 7.7 percent.

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