Wolf’s budget will not help middle class
One of the primary facets of his revolutionary overtax and overspend agenda about which Gov. Tom Wolf is crowing is his contention that property taxes will be markedly reduced.
In dissecting the governor’s budget address, one can conclude that the many tax hikes for which he calls are crystal clear, while the proposed tax reductions are murky. My research indicates that the benefits to residents of my community (and many others) would be far outstripped by the tax hikes in the package.
According to the website www.schoolsthatteach.com, assembled by the Wolf administration, $6,192,620 in annual property tax relief would flow to Upper Saint Clair, an amount which may seem like a good sum of money. It isn’t. The estimated real estate school property tax reduction is a mere 16.89 percent. Given that there are about 8,000 homes in the community, the average tax savings would be a paltry $774, a small reduction on a total average annual property tax burden of about $8,000, nowhere near the 50 percent figure which Gov. Wolf touts as a benefit to some.
The middle class family with an annual income of $125,000 would lose under the Wolf initiative, as it would pay an additional $787.50 in state income tax and would be hit with a new 7.6 percent sales tax on items such as chewing gum, candy, newspapers, magazines, caskets, nursing home and in-home care, textbooks, flags, personal hygiene products, and accounting and legal services, to cite just a few of our new “luxuries.” The individual who is foolish enough to smoke would pay hundreds more per year courtesy of a Wolf $1 cigarette tax hike.
Also unclear is how the governor would ensure that districts like mine, which hews toward profligate spending, could be restrained in the level of expenditures and taxation that they inflict on residents of the district.
When one group benefits, another must pay. If Upper St. Clair residents see everyone in the district as affluent and feel that we have been undertaxed, they may be enamored of our new big-government, high-spending leader.
Oren Spiegler
Upper St. Clair