Sue Minter’s Job-Killing Tax Hikes Would Hurt Vermont Families

There’s nothing that political insider Sue Minter won’t tax. Minter’s proposed tax hikes will increase the prices of everything from haircuts to child care. As today’s editorial in the Caledonian Record highlights, increasing taxes on goods and services will hurt Vermont families and business, raise costs, and drive jobs out of the state.

Editorial: Minter’s Dangerous Tax Plans
Caledonian Record; 9/22/2016

“In August, Democratic candidate for governor Sue Minter proposed raising fuel taxes on gasoline and diesel. Her mechanism would be a ‘Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative,’ among a dozen northeastern states, whereby the sale of gas and diesel fuel would be capped, and those who needed to keep on using those fuels would have to buy an emissions ticket from their state. This is necessary, she says, to combat climate change – one of the big issues (along with gun control), of her campaign.

In an interview on Radio Vermont last week, Minter dropped another tax raising shoe. She wants to expand the sales tax to cover services, possibly at a rate lower than the present 6%.

This would make people pay taxes on the services rendered to them by a long list of occupations, including taxi drivers, hairdressers/barbers, doctors, dentists, home health aides, child care providers, plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, excavators, farm service companies, funeral homes, truckers, lawyers, architects, computer technicians, and many more.

Out of this flood of new revenue Minter will bestow (among other things), two free years of college, regardless of income. Her tax ambitions are bad enough for Vermont generally, but they are especially dangerous along the New Hampshire border.

Vermont retail businesses have enough trouble competing with sales-tax-free N.H. establishments. Under Minter’s service tax proposal, Vermont service providers would have to compete with their Granite State counterparts, who could do the same work at five or six percent lower cost.

Caledonia County Republicans passed a strong resolution opposing a sales tax on services a year ago. The outgoing Democratic Legislature didn’t attempt it in this election year, but Sue Minter has given us fair warning that if she wins the governorship, it’s coming back.

Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, the Republican candidate for governor, said Monday that he will veto any sales tax on services. We think Scott has a lot better grasp of economics, and the facts of life in eastern Vermont, than Minter.”