It's possible to see how social media, like this, and the tendentious thrusts it makes as it lumbers in the dark destroys the plain, unremarkable truth of things...
Sorry Golf Channel staff who are going to familiarize themselves with some of the highest taxes in the nation, while leaving a no income tax state.
At the most basic language level these two things are basically true, but then there is the nuance to be discovered after a slogan is cast out among us swine...
1. CT's overall range of ITx rates is 12th most out of the 42 states that charge one... "some of the highest?" Ok but it's a stretch... and still closer to the middle (#21) than the highest at #1, no? So when do you lose the ability to call it the highest?
2. CT's TOP rate (6.99)...not the mean, median or frequency but the TOP rate, (which only 27.5 k out of 1.8 million taxpayers paid in 2017) is only
slightly above average for the TOP rates nationally, ranking 19th out of the 42 with any income tax. Still sound like the highest? Even for the unwashed in Greenwich?
3. The sales tax rate (6.35%) IS 8th highest (out of all 50 states in this measure) and there are additionally a scale of luxury taxes on 50k+ cars, jewelry, and large single purchases of clothing/accesories, so perhaps here is what is meant by "highest taxes"...
4. ...if it weren't for the mitigating fact that CT has NO local sales taxes AND that most staple grocery items are not taxed.
5. CT's liquour, wine and beer taxes rank 29th, 28th, 27th respectively on a national basis.
6. CT's cigarette tax (4.35 a pack) ranks 9th nationally, but I take it no one minds or cares what that rate is, and if you're a non or former smoker, wish it was more.
7. CT's gas tax ranks 11th nationally, so I suppose in the upper 25%...but highest?...meh.
8. And to round out the picture...CT's estate tax, which starts at estates valued over 3.5 million (show of hands please) where the heirs would pay 225k and caps at 11.1 million where the heirs would pay approximately 1 million for the other 10...hmmm, we may have to dispense with the polo ponies and the family trip to Majorca will have to be capped at 3 weeks, instead of the full 30 days for which we had hoped... anyhoo, I don't think any susbstantial meaning behind "highest" even included this meager situation (people with 3.5 million+ estates dying in any one year).
So it appears, there's a bit of trouble with the slogan..."highest taxes" as put forward by the un-intrepid Mr. Schley... are they high compared to an income no-tax state? Of course they are, but when the details are examined and the MASS of citizens considered, the situation is a lot more middlin' than such scented jingo more often found in Tea Party tweets.
But of course, there is this dog-whistle to those poor in spirit, the bedraggled of the corporate class...
Great move...perhaps they got the State Tax breaks that were not an enticement for GE? Excellent economic development by the Malloy/Lamont team.
Like Mc Auliffe to von Luttwitz at Bastogne, we (that's me, Lamont and Malloy) say "NUTS!" to GE and this Rape of the Lock satire...
In the June run-up to the 15-16 budget, according to the Hartford Courant (Jan 13, 2016) it was discovered and brought to light that GE with revenues that year of over 30 billion in all units typically paid the MINIMUM corporate income tax...wanna guess at the figure? Not 25 million ... Not 2.5 million... not 250k....not 25k...but 250 dollars. Yes, indeed there were hundreds if not thousands of Mom n Pop incorporate for 50 bucks type businesses that paid more than GE.
In reaction, a large corporate tax to overide this rank and corrosive accountant/lobbyists gratuity was proposed...merely proposed, mind you. And that's when Immelt and the Fairfield Grays upped sticks to Boston, who not only gave 120 million in tax incentives (the same kind I suppose that reduced GE's CITx of yore to $250 dollars), plus 25m in property tax breaks, plus 1 million in relocation assistance for what was expected to be as many as 3000 of CT's 5500 GE persons in the Boston area...
We'll return to that in one moment...but fast forward to recent events and hear these items:
A. Less than three years later, GE scrapped plans to build a waterfront tower for 800 persons and returned 87 million in incentives to the state.
B. The Boston footprint is now slated to be for 250 persons in a refurbished Necco factory (I believe).
C. GE has sold or is in process of converting for sale much of its hard manufacture footprint (jets, power plants, renewable energy, transportation etc) and is moving entirely into comm, cloud, integrated digital components, health care, bio tech sectors.
D. At the time of the move GE traded at a 26-27.50 clip... now? 10.75- 11.25... of course I would make the same simpleton's screed mistake I called out JS and CM for, if I said 2=2 = 4 and don't they wish they stayed in Fairfield...I'm not saying that, I'm saying that in the flotsam or jetsam of a huge multi billion dollar company whose trying to sap breaks from the state that pays for things all people (in CT and in your state) need -- schools, roads, infrastructure, administration, elder care, medical safety, emergencies and oh yes, those poor fucking union rubes who signed up for a pension don't you know -- reveals itself as rank and petty and craven and morally bankrupt, so with Malooy and with Lamont, I say
NUTS to you...and don';t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.
Now, I said I would return to the GE move and I will now to focus on the true manner in which CT has allowed that "highest taxes" sobriquet to be flowered on our Constitution State...the damn PROPERTY taxes, which are not controlled by Marxist-Lenninist bastards like me (that's only half a joke) or the politcial class which I vote for, or assignable to the deepest of Royal Blue states that we are...it's the individual municiplaties, which set those rates when they were varipus shades of all colors, blue, red, purple, black and white... some of THOSE folks have been the reddest of deadest meat, so Jeff Immelt, talk to the rich pititzers in Fairfield New Cannan and Westport about why your campus cost 1.8 million... but if you look under the couch cushions, I'm sure the GE gods would locate same...
Still the likely plainest truth of all for GE's move is not the taxes (as shown) or the threat of taxes (who cares at these numbers) but the fact that Boston is a current player in uiniversity and hi-tech talent that better befits the move away from analog brand to digital icon that they seem to be wanting to make.
But as a last kick in the mouth to those who are curlign their toes, let me say it's a classic "Ok Boomer" move...for those whose lives and children's lives have already benefitted from CT's great schools, safe and generally peaceful environment, cultural interest and access to NYC, to leave when the benfits to YOU and YOURS are exhausted in the life cycle. "Fuck you, I'm not paying for something I already used."