The N.H. Statehouse (File photo by Bailey Stover / Sentinel Staff)
Proposals are emerging for next year’s legislative session aimed at increasing state revenues and lowering local property taxes.
N.H. Rep. Tom Schamberg, D-Wilmot, acknowledges it’s politically difficult to reinstate taxes that have been cut. But he contends this is needed to ease the burden on property taxpayers now paying for the lion’s share of public education.
He has a series of proposals to restore business tax rates that have been cut over the past decade. Schamberg also wants to reinstate the Interest and Dividends Tax, a levy on investment returns, that lawmakers eliminated last year.
“I think it’s worthwhile for the residents, the families, the businesses to see who is trying to reduce their property taxes in the state of New Hampshire — not add an income tax, not add a sales tax,” he said in an interview Monday. “We can add almost $900 million plus dollars over two years to our revenue streams by passing my [legislative service request].”
An LSR (Legislative Service Request) is the precursor to an actual detailed bill that will be considered during next year’s legislative session.
Republicans, who now control both chambers of the Legislature as well as the governor’s office, have backed tax cuts over the years under the theory that they stimulate business investment and help the economy at large.
However, the N.H. Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit, has estimated that the state had about a billion dollars less revenue from 2016 to 2024 because of cuts to the Business Profits Tax and the Business Enterprise Tax.
The state’s Interest and Dividends Tax, the elimination of which disproportionately benefitted people with high incomes, brought in as much as $184 million yearly before it was eliminated.
Meanwhile, New Hampshire depends more than any other state on property taxpayers to fund public education, and has some of the highest property tax rates in the nation.
The New Hampshire Constitution requires that the state fund an adequate public education. Court rulings have declared the state is not living up to this commitment.
Republican lawmakers contend that the best way to reduce property taxes is not to access new revenue streams, but to cut local spending by schools and municipalities. To that end, they put a question on Tuesday’s ballot that would allow voters to put a cap on local school property tax levies.
Rick Green can be reached at [PHONE_REDACTED], extension 1435, or [EMAIL_REDACTED].
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