June 7, 2018

The (Maine) Free Press: Where the Democratic Gubernatorial Candidates Should Stand on the Issues

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In the past several years, the LePage administration and now the Trump administration have been very kind to higher-income earners. In 2011, the governor signed a $400 million tax cut, largely skewed to benefit the wealthiest income earners, which he paid for by cutting tax revenue sharing to municipalities, causing property taxes to rise. Since then, the Legislature has raised the sales taxes and passed another $135.4 million income tax cuts. And this past December, Congress passed its monumental federal tax cut.

All of this has come at a time when the state and local governments struggle to fund schools and other essential services without dramatically raising more regressive property taxes. Currently, the middle 20 percent of Maine income earners, or households earning between $33,000 and $52,000 a year, pay 9.4 percent of their incomes to state and local taxes, while those in the top 1 percent earning over $362,000 a year pay 7.5 percent, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Read more



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