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Eight States Take Wrong Approach with Coordinated Tax Hike Proposals: Lee Schalk in The Center Square

These states are doubling down on the high tax and spend policies that have sent taxpayers packing in search of greater opportunity.

Lee Schalk, ALEC Vice President of Policy, weighed in on a collection of state bills targeting high earners and job creators. Schalk told The Center Square, a newswire service that focuses on state- and local-level government and economic reporting, that this is the wrong approach to economic growth and prosperity.

State legislators announced a collection of bills that target the wealthiest citizens in the U.S. across eight states. Yet many experts don’t expect most of the country’s wealthiest to pay up if any of these bills pass.

The targeted states include Washington, California, Illinois, Connecticut, Hawaii, New York, Maryland and Minnesota. The bills share the same goal of increasing taxes on the wealthiest in the U.S.

Lee Schalk, the Vice President of Policy at the American Legislative Exchange Council, similarly said that Washington and the other seven states are continuing to push high taxes, which have already forced a number of taxpayers to move to other states.

“Unfortunately, these states are doubling down on the high tax and spend policies that have sent taxpayers packing in search of greater opportunity,” Schalk said to The Center Square in an email. “It was never more obvious than during the COVID-19 pandemic, when hundreds of thousands of individuals left states like California, New York and New Jersey and moved to low or no income tax states like Arizona, Texas, North Carolina and Florida.”

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