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A New Year, A New Strategy for Rhode Island
Let's begin our work together for change in 2009.
Please take a minute to send a message to House and Senate Leadership as well as your Representative and Senator. Ask them to use the crisis facing Rhode Islanders to promote change- change that will stop shifting taxes away from the richest Rhode Islanders, while the rest of struggle to make end meets.
A combination of unrealistic budget savings, the economic crisis, and more than a decade of state income tax cuts tilted towards the wealthiest taxpayers and corporations has left Rhode Island with a more than $350 million budget deficit for the current fiscal year ending in June. In January, the General Assembly is likely to begin pursuing solutions to the budget crisis -- and we need to ensure that these solutions are not focused on making drastic cuts to education, health care, and local aid.
Meanwhile, Rhode Island stands to forfeit an estimated $37.2 million this coming year due to the "Flat Tax" which cuts taxes for just a few thousand of the top earners in the state, and an estimated $26.8 million more because of reduced capital gains taxes. We are losing tens of millions more because of efforts by multi-state corporations to use their complicated corporate structures to keep from paying Rhode Island corporate income tax. If this new revenue is not brought in and the assembly makes cuts to local aid, then taxes will go up -- but they will go up for homeowners and renters through the property tax rather than the wealthiest.
Contact your legislators today to ask them to enact fair revenue solutions that stop shifting taxes from the rich to the rest of us!
| Sample Letter for Campaign |
Subject:
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
Rhode Islanders voted in record numbers for change for President-Elect Obama in November. I also believe that we need change on the state level to address the severe budget crisis without continuing on the course of the last few years of depending on harmful cuts to education, health care, and other critical programs to balance the budget and pay for tax breaks to the wealthiest and for large corporations.
These tax breaks have only made the rest of us pick up a greater share of taxes. Deep cuts to cities and towns in the upcoming supplement budget would continue this trend by forcing greater increases in property taxes. I encourage you to look instead to rebalance the tax system immediately by:
*Restoring the long-term capital gains tax rate to 5 percent from its current 1.67 percent, and taxing short-term capital gains the same as regular income. Both of these changes would still have our capital gains taxed at lower rates than in Massachusetts.
*Eliminating the flat tax is costing the state tens of millions of dollars per year in giveaways to the few thousand of the wealthiest tax filers, more than have of whom live out of state.
*Making sure multi-state corporations pay their fair share of Rhode Island taxes by enacting combined reporting.
Rhode Islanders do not believe that continuing to cut taxes for the wealthiest and for out of state corporations is the way to produce jobs and grow our economy. Since the implementation of the alternative flat tax and the reduction in the capital gains tax rate, Rhode Island's economy has slowed and we now have the highest unemployment rate in the country.
In the new year, we need a new strategy to ensure that we can fund the programs Rhode Islanders depend on to learn, to stay healthy, and to succeed economically.
Sincerely,
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