Advocates Want to Raise Taxes for Wealthiest Vermonters by 3 Percent

By ANNE WALLACE ALLEN @ANNEWALLALLEN

Published November 9, 2023 at 5:25 p.m.

A large group of advocates will ask lawmakers in January to increase taxes for Vermont's highest wage earners, saying the money is needed to bolster housing, health care, and other needs that are increasingly out of reach for low- and middle-income Vermonters.

Adding a 3 percent surcharge for people earning $500,000 or more would raise $100 million annually, according to the new campaign, called Fair Share Vermont. And it would help put to rights a lopsided tax policy that has increasingly favored the rich, the group said.

“We too often have heard we don't have enough money. Not enough money for clean water, not enough money for affordable housing, not enough money to repair our schools,” Don Tinney, president of the state's teachers' union, Vermont-NEA, said at a Statehouse press conference on Thursday. “But you know who always seems to have enough money? Vermont's wealthiest residents, because of decades of tax policies that favor the accumulation of individual wealth instead of the common good.”

Anika Heilweil, who works at Public Assets Institute, is manager of the initiative, which has backing from the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, Vermont Conservation Voters, the Vermont Natural Resources Council and other groups. Heilweil said the proposal would only affect the wealthiest 2 percent of Vermont taxpayers.

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