Diamond Jim on taxes: increase, increase, increase
There was never a tax increase that Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle didn’t like! Here’s the list from his latest budget:
- Tax on a pack of cigarettes: from $1.25 to $2.02
- Vehicle registration fees: from $55 to $75
- Driver’s license fees: from $24 to $34
- Property taxes: they can go up as much as 4%, which is double the two-year cap that expired in January. This would mean a $75 increase on a home with taxes of $2,730 last year.
- New hospital tax: 1% of gross revenue
- Nursing home bed tax: from $75 a month per bed to $125 a month
- Real estate transfer tax: from $3 to $5 per $1,000 of sale price. This would make the transfer tax on a $166,000 home sale go from $498 to $830.
In addition, Jimmy is proposing taking $175 million from the state’s malpractice fund and wasting that too! Oh, and did I mention that when running for governor in 2002, Doyle said he’d cut 10,000 state jobs? He’s barely made a dent in that so far with less than 3,000 jobs cut, and his current budget adds 791 employees.
