There are two more points about taxes in CT that the article missed.
1) Charity donations are not tax deductible from CT state income tax. ALL charitable contributions to all charities are fully taxed in CT. Readers of T19 may be interested to note that this includes taxes on contributions to the Church.
2) CT state income tax is paid on money used to pay CT property taxes. The maximum deduction allowed is only $500, so of the near $5,000 the couple in the article are paying in property tax on their home, and the $829.36 they are paying in property taxes on their vehicles, they can only deduct $500. That means, they must pay the full CT state income tax on the remaining $5,329 that they are paying in property tax. It is a tax on the tax they are paying.
CT, despite having Republican governors, has had a legislature run by Democrats for many decades. The Republican governors have been RINOs and the legislature holds the purse strings. The fact that we pay some of the highest taxes in the entire United States does nothing to mitigate the profligacy of the one party rule by democrats. The current CT state budget deficit is around $641,000,000 and continues to grow. We burned through the $1 Billion “rainy day fund” we had last year and now we have a debt in excess of $1 Billion. CT has the highest state tax debt per capita at $4,859 per person. We are the worst state in the US when it comes to this measure. The state just increased the upper end of the income tax scale to 6.5%, yet, we continue to sink further and further into debt. Property taxes went up on my house this year by hundreds of dollars, despite the fact that my house lost about $80,000 in value since 2007.
Yet, the liberals have this state in an absolute choke hold. I don’t see anything shy of state bankruptcy changing that. Even then, I am not confident that the people in this state are smart enough to vote for anyone besides the democrats. The majority seem to be hard wired to vote Left on every issue.
One of the interesting differences between the US (though apparently not Connecticut!) and Britain is that here charitable contributions are deductible, while in the Motherland the recipient charity gets to claim back the tax that was paid on the donation by the donor for the benefit of the charity.
I don’t know whether this makes a difference to the relative levels of giving, but the difference has always intrigued me.
There are two more points about taxes in CT that the article missed.
1) Charity donations are not tax deductible from CT state income tax. ALL charitable contributions to all charities are fully taxed in CT. Readers of T19 may be interested to note that this includes taxes on contributions to the Church.
2) CT state income tax is paid on money used to pay CT property taxes. The maximum deduction allowed is only $500, so of the near $5,000 the couple in the article are paying in property tax on their home, and the $829.36 they are paying in property taxes on their vehicles, they can only deduct $500. That means, they must pay the full CT state income tax on the remaining $5,329 that they are paying in property tax. It is a tax on the tax they are paying.
CT, despite having Republican governors, has had a legislature run by Democrats for many decades. The Republican governors have been RINOs and the legislature holds the purse strings. The fact that we pay some of the highest taxes in the entire United States does nothing to mitigate the profligacy of the one party rule by democrats. The current CT state budget deficit is around $641,000,000 and continues to grow. We burned through the $1 Billion “rainy day fund” we had last year and now we have a debt in excess of $1 Billion. CT has the highest state tax debt per capita at $4,859 per person. We are the worst state in the US when it comes to this measure. The state just increased the upper end of the income tax scale to 6.5%, yet, we continue to sink further and further into debt. Property taxes went up on my house this year by hundreds of dollars, despite the fact that my house lost about $80,000 in value since 2007.
Yet, the liberals have this state in an absolute choke hold. I don’t see anything shy of state bankruptcy changing that. Even then, I am not confident that the people in this state are smart enough to vote for anyone besides the democrats. The majority seem to be hard wired to vote Left on every issue.
I’ve got to get out of here.
One of the interesting differences between the US (though apparently not Connecticut!) and Britain is that here charitable contributions are deductible, while in the Motherland the recipient charity gets to claim back the tax that was paid on the donation by the donor for the benefit of the charity.
I don’t know whether this makes a difference to the relative levels of giving, but the difference has always intrigued me.