Massachusetts

After GE: What Connecticut can learn from the Bay State

After GE: What Connecticut can learn from the Bay State

Carol Platt Liebau

In a political era when "success stories" are all too rare, Massachusetts shines as a remarkable counter-example. Once denigrated as "Taxachusetts" and infamous as a high-tax, Big Government beachhead, Massachusetts recently ate Connecticut's lunch (and breakfast, and dinner) by attracting its foremost corporate citizen, General Electric, to Boston.

Connecticut has much to learn from its northern neighbor's burgeoning prosperity. For now, however, it seems mired in the outdated public policies that once hobbled Massachusetts. According to the Tax Foundation's 2016 State Business Tax Climate index, Connecticut ranks 44th out of 50 states in property taxes; 36th in individual income taxes; and 33rd in corporate taxes. The combination means that Connecticut is the fourth worst state for taxpayers.

What’s a ‘fair share’?
clinton

What’s a ‘fair share’?

Walter E. Williams

Presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, along with President Obama, say they want high-income earners, otherwise known as the rich, to pay their fair share of income taxes. None of these people, as well as the uninformed in the media and our campus intellectual elites, will say precisely what is the "fair share" of taxes. That is because they would look ignorant and silly, so they stick with simply saying that the rich should pay more. Let's you and I take a peek at who pays what in federal income taxes.

The following represents 2012 income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service, compiled by the Tax Foundation. The top 1 percent, 1.37 million taxpayers earning $434,682 and more, paid 38 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 5 percent, those earning $175,817 and more, paid 59 percent. The top 10 percent of income earners, those earning $125,195 and up, paid 70 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 25 percent, those earning $73,354 and up, paid 86 percent. The bottom 50 percent, people earning $36,055 and less, paid a little less than 3 percent of federal income taxes. According to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, slightly over 45 percent of American households have no federal income tax liability.

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