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.

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