Summary
After 2011, the top rate would drop to9-9 percent.\n (Maine also deserves credit for overhauling its tax system in ways that make it more equitable and progressive.) Reform depends on the presence of courageous state officials and on-theground advocacy groups to contest the permanent influence of business lobbies. State and local tax revenues are likely to remain meager, the share of the population relying on state and local services will be high, health-care and educational costs will continue to soar, state pension plans will remain badly underfunded, and the federal stimulus money that staved off disaster will run out unless Congress passes bolder emergency aid.
See the full content of this document
Extract
Reform Amid Fiscal Ruin
In October 2007, two months before the onset of the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression, Maryland's Democratic governor, Martin O'Malley, convened a special session of his state's Democrat-controlled General Assembly in a high-stakes effort to close an unexpectedly large $1.7 billion budgetary shortfall. A central component of O'Mal ley's proposal was converting the state's flat income tax of 4.75 percent to a progressive system with higher brackets of 6 percent and 6.5 percent for upperincome households. At the same time, he advocated a combination of tax hikes on corporate income, sales, tobacco, and vehicle titles, along with reductions in taxes on property and the incomes of lower earners.
The progressivity of O'Malley's plan was somewhat we...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
