The Star Ledger: NJ Millionaires Tax Could Help Plug Budget Hole

By Star-Ledger Editorial Board, May 20, 2014

Gov. Chris Christie has promised to announce a plan this week to put our state budget on life support. He’s suggested he will do whatever it takes — politics be damned — to close the $807 million hole we are facing:

“Everything is on the table to balance the budget,” he said last week.

As top Democratic legislators point out, “everything” should include raising taxes on the wealthy. Time to revive the millionaires tax, which despite its enormous public support, Christie vetoed three times.

…

All in all, poor and middle class people in America end up paying a much greater share of their income in state and local taxes than the wealthy do, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found. What Sweeney proposes is simply a fairer way to spread the pain: A true millionaires tax would apply only to whatever income a wealthy person earns over $1 million, and could raise an estimated $800 million in the first year alone.

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