In late April, New Hampshire Democrats drew a line in the sand. The government had shut down businesses that knee-capped revenues. Decreased revenue would trigger a massive tax increase on job creators. It seems unfair, but these are Democrats. The government always comes first.
Related: Democrats Want 12% Tax Hike on Businesses They Demanded Be Shuttered
In our April report, we noted that “Your reward for being forced to shut down, cut back hours, reduce staff, or furlough entire payrolls is the loss of another tax cut and a resulting 12% tax hike.”
Democrats are committed to killing the economy with COVID, and any recovery from that. A problem Rep Judy Aron wrote about Friday.
Rep. Ley led his Democrat Caucus to vote down legislation that would have prevented a 12.5% increase in Business taxes because he claimed we don’t have enough information yet on revenue estimates; information which he felt was “scrawled on a napkin”. In the meantime, as NH businesses suffer from drops in revenue from a shutdown in business due to COVID, apparently the Democrat Caucus feels that we should kick business owners while they are down and hit them up for more taxes. I hope business owners remember this in upcoming elections.
I hope they remember it too.
Republican Minority Leader Dick Hinch (R – Merrimack) had words for his liberal colleagues as well.
The time is now to act on this urgent need for our businesses to know their taxes will not go up and they can get our citizens back to work. Piling tax increases on top of a difficult recovery will drag out our recovery even longer.”
“Democrats have stated they’d rather ask businesses to ‘wait and see’ if the legislature does something in 7 months. That doesn’t make sense. The January 1 rate hike is affecting their decision making now, this year. 7 months of uncertainty is not what we were elected to deliver, but that’s what Democrats voted for today.”
Mr. Hinch is correct. Business planning is not like last-minute legislating, especially after being limited, or in many cases, shut down by state orders. Small Businesses will assume the taxes are going up and act accordingly now. That means a decrease in hiring and fewer capital investments. These adjustments, even when minor, will have a more significant effect on the state economy as a whole. One that was the best in the Northeast with record low unemployment before the forced shutdown.
It’s a sad testament to Democrat rule and proof that we were never all in this together. Everyone but the government took a hit. And now that we are crawling back from the edge, the grow-government-first Democrats are rewarding us for our sacrifice by taking more from the pockets of job creators to ensure their beloved government has more money with which to rule us.
As Rep Aron notes, I hope business owners (and I’ll add employees, and former employees) remember this in upcoming elections.