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NC Budget and Tax Center
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State revenue collections are coming in $199.2 million below projections half way through the fiscal year, according to the legislature’s non-partisan Fiscal Research Division’s new revenue outlook report. This report provides an assessment of revenue collection performance for the state on a quarterly basis. The main culprit behind the mid-year shortfall is the 2013 tax plan that reduces revenue availability while primarily benefitting wealthy taxpayers and profitable corporations. The plan’s personal income tax cuts are costing more than previously expected.

The growing cost of the 2013 tax plan further challenges state lawmakers’ ability to rebuild what was lost in the aftermath of the Great Recession and reposition itself to compete nationally and globally. North Carolinians are already dealing with the fallout of the current state budget that falls short of what’s needed for children, families, and communities to thrive. The inadequacy of the budget has been chronicled in the news, with many stories focusing on how there are too few textbooks (even toilet paper) as well as the local challenges that state budget and tax decisions are creating.

It is important to view this mid-year revenue shortfall in the context of the dollars that lawmakers already lost due to the tax plan. For the 2015 fiscal year, Fiscal Research Division originally estimated that the plan would cost $512.8 million but soon revised its revenue outlook to account for an additional loss of $191 million. This latest report of $199.2 million in under-collections comes on top of these already-accounted-for losses.  By the end of the fiscal year, the total cost of the tax plan could reach as high as $1.1 billion, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s estimates. That’s roughly equivalent to the state dollars that support the entire Community College System.

Highlights of the Revenue Outlook Report Read More

NC Budget and Tax Center
Posted by : 5 Comments In NC Budget and Tax Center

The latest Who Pays? report released today by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) takes a look at the fairness of state tax systems. For North Carolina, the lowest income North Carolinians pay over 70 percent more in state and local taxes as a share of their income compared to the state’s wealthiest residents, the ITEP report highlights.

The lowest 20 percent of North Carolinians – with an average income of $10,700 – pay 9.2 percent of their income in state and local taxes, the study finds, compared to 5.3 percent for the top 1 percent, the average income for this group is $969,100.

North Carolina’s unfair tax system presents both short- and long-term challenges and concerns. The state’s unfair tax system not only contributes to widening income inequality in the short term, but also leaves the state struggling to raise adequate revenue for public investments in the long term, ITEP notes. These realities are already playing out in the North Carolina. As state lawmakers return to Raleigh this week for the 2015 legislative session they face an ongoing revenue shortfall as a result of tax cuts passed in 2013.

North Carolina has moved away from many features that create a fairer tax system. State lawmakers replaced a graduated personal income tax rate structure (meaning the higher one’s income, the higher one’s effective personal income tax rate) with a flat rate that doesn’t take into account a taxpayer’s ability to pay, allowed the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit to expire, expanded the sales tax base, and allowed the corporate income tax rate to be cut from 6.9 to 5 percent and potentially as low as 3 percent.

These changes have resulted in a sizable reduction in revenue, with the state now challenged with funding basic public obligations such as education and healthcare services for the elderly and poor. Returning to a graduated income tax rate structure, reestablishing a state Earned Income Tax Credit, creating a renter’s credit or an enhanced and refundable Child Tax Credit, and stopping further tax cuts that largely benefit the wealthy and profitable corporations are important opportunities to create a fairer state tax code.

A state tax code that works for all North Carolina taxpayers is important for ensuring that economic opportunity and prosperity is broadly shared. The Who Pays? report highlights that there is work to be done to make this a reality.

News
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The UNC Board of Governors heard from several top lawmakers Thursday as part of an attempt by the system’s governing board to improve relations with the elected officials that fund them.

So, what advice did they get?

Bring more conservative voices to campuses, keep cutting administrative costs and, when you are asking for more funding, make your case quickly and clearly.

Republican state Reps. John Bell, Tim Moore of Kings Mountain, and Nelson Dollar of Wake County spoke Thursday afternoon with members of the UNC Board of Governor’s public affairs committee.

Dollar, the top budget writer in the House, said in his opening remarks that he and many of his Republican colleagues want to see conservative voices welcomed on the 17 campuses that are part of the UNC system.

“We want to make sure that diversity on campuses means among other things … that more conservative voices have a hearing as well and (are as) welcome at the campuses,” Dollar said.

The conversation Thursday comes as the UNC is preparing its budget requests for the next two years, which the state legislature will take up in its long session beginning in January. Though it avoided significant cuts for this year, public colleges and universities in the state have weathered deep cuts in prior years that trimmed nearly a half-billion dollars in 2011.

Bell, who is finishing his first term, said he hears from constituents and others who think the university system is still too top-heavy.

“Let’s start streamlining some of this bloated administration,” he said, adding that he think there are too many academic centers at various university campuses.

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2015 Fiscal Year State Budget, NC Budget and Tax Center
Posted by : 1 Comment In 2015 Fiscal Year State Budget, NC Budget and Tax Center

The 2015 state budget for creating jobs and growing the economy doubles down on the wrong turn taken by the legislature on economic issues over the last year. First it was the decision to continue to last year’s ill-advised tax cuts for the wealthy instead of investing in job training and education—the real building blocks of sustainable economic growth. Then it was the decision to privatize the business recruiting activities of the Department of Commerce—despite evidence from other states these initiatives produce more scandals than jobs—and eliminate regional planning initiatives that helped small communities coordinate their economic development efforts.

And now the state budget completes this trifecta of poor choices for economic development by spending more of our state’s limited resources on programs that are both ineffective at creating jobs and are overwhelmingly targeted to the wealthiest urban areas of the state instead of the more distressed areas in rural North Carolina.

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Falling Behind in NC, NC Budget and Tax Center, Poverty and Income Data 2013, Poverty and Policy Matters
Posted by : In Falling Behind in NC, NC Budget and Tax Center, Poverty and Income Data 2013, Poverty and Policy Matters

New data released by the US Census highlight the pervasiveness of poverty nationally and in North Carolina. In 2013, one in six North Carolinians lived below the federal poverty rate – less than $24,000 a year for a family of four and  $12,000 a year for an individual. For communities of color, the poverty rate is far worse: 32.5 percent for Latinos, 28.9 percent for American Indians, and 28 percent for African Americans.

These daunting poverty rates highlight that far too many individuals and families across the state face economic hardship. The persistence of poverty has been accompanied by a rise in income inequality, which poses consequential implications for the overall economy and North Carolina’s state economy. The bulk of economic gains from the ongoing economic recovery have flowed to a small group of high-income earners. In the first three years of the economic recovery, the top 1 percent of income earners captured 95 percent of the income gains nationally. Here in North Carolina, income for the top 1 percent of income earners in the state grew by 6.2 percent from 2009 to 2011 while the bottom 99 percent saw their income decline by 2.9 percent. The latest US Census data show that this early post recovery trend is likely to hold. By 2013, the top 20 percent of households in North Carolina captured more than half of all income earned by all households in the state (see graphic below). Read More

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