Continuing their effort to send vital tax relief where needed most, Assembly Democratic leadership today unveiled a 20 percent property tax relief credit for New Jersey’s middle-class and lower-income homeowners. The Assembly Democratic plan would help 95 percent of New Jersey homeowners and provide a maximum credit of $2,000, with the average family in line to receive a $1,552 credit that would provide relief against property taxes that have soared a net 20 percent under Republican Gov. Chris Christie.
“This is geared directly toward helping New Jersey’s middle-class and lower-income families who have shouldered a heavy burden the last two years,” said Assembly Speaker Sheila Y. Oliver (D-Essex/Passaic). “It focuses on our state’s most painful and regressive tax and sends help where it’s needed most – to New Jersey’s working class families. It’s a plan everybody should support to help New Jersey’s middle-class and poor struggling to make ends meet and keep their homes.”
“The evidence is clear that Gov. Christie’s proposed income tax scheme would benefit the rich far more than New Jersey’s middle-class, but our plan steers us back in the right direction and provides help against the tax that burdens working families the most,” said Assembly Majority Leader Lou Greenwald (D-Camden). “We’re providing help to our middle-class families who have suffered while Gov. Christie protected tax cuts to the wealthy, and we’re targeting the pain eating away at our state – the property tax. This is a plan everyone should rally behind on behalf of our middle-class.”
“Gov. Christie is focusing on a tax cut that benefits the extremely wealthy and provides a nice sound bite for national conservative activists, but our focus is and always will be on hard working middle-class families here in New Jersey who struggle to make ends meet and pay their property taxes,” said Deputy Speaker John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex). “If we want to make New Jersey more affordable and competitive, then we must tackle the property tax. That is our goal with this pro-working family plan.”
“Our goal must be to help our struggling middle-class and lower-income families,” said Assembly Budget Chairman Vincent Prieto (D-Hudson/Bergen). “We know tax cuts for the rich neither help our economy nor our middle-class, so let’s put the focus where it belongs – on New Jersey’s working families. Let’s do the right thing and provide real, reliable and responsible property tax relief in a way that helps nearly all our middle-class and poor.”
A recent analysis by www.njspotlight.com found that Christie’s cuts to the property tax rebate program mean net property taxes are 20 percent higher under Gov. Christie than they were before he took office.
The Democratic plan would provide a property tax relief credit – through the gross income tax return – for all residential homeowners with incomes up to $250,000 in the amount of 20 percent of the first $10,000 in property taxes paid.
This would provide a maximum property tax relief credit of $2,000. Based on the 2011 average residential property tax bill, the average family would receive a property tax relief credit of $1,552.
As a comparison, a family earning $100,000 that pays $8,000 in property taxes would get $1,600 under the Assembly Democratic plan, compared to $275 under the governor’s plan.
The plan would be phased-in over four years – just as the governor’s plan – but substantial relief would begin immediately, with the first year providing a credit of 20 percent of the first $5,000 in property taxes paid.
Under the plan, there would be no statutory change to the existing property tax rebate/credit program, but homeowners qualifying for the property tax relief credit would receive the larger of the two.
The Senior Freeze property tax relief program would remain in place.
Also, the minimum credit under the existing property tax deduction for those not qualifying for the new credit would triple from $50 to $150. This would primarily benefit tenants. Tenants would also continue to remain eligible to receive the property tax rebate/credit in any year it would be funded.
Taxpayers with incomes between $250,000 and $1 million would see no change and would remain eligible for the existing property tax deduction.
To pay for the new revenue needed for the middle-class and lower-income property tax relief, the state’s income tax rate for those earning more than $1 million would be increased beginning next fiscal year. The rate would go from 8.97 percent to 10.75 percent. This would impact about 16,000 out of about 2.6 million filers and raise $800 million at the plan’s full implementation in fiscal year 2016.
Also to be used to fund the plan would be the $1.4 billion from the governor’s income tax cut plan, $400 million in existing property tax rebate/credit appropriations and $300 million in existing property tax deduction expenditures. TLS.
property tax rebates sound great,but paying for it by raising taxes on nj businesses that make over a million sounds terrible.this will discourage hiring and encourage them to leave the state. at this tenuous economic juncture,we should not be doing anything to harm business.we all know that the costs are just passed on to us.its like that talking point “end all tax subsidies for oil companies”.sounds good to me if you can devise a way to prevent them from raising their prices!(which is pretty much impossible)
This sounds like a real idea!! Raising the taxes on 16,000 MILLIONAIRS out of 2.8 million fillers works out to .005% of the richest New Jersians! The same New Jersians who are benifiting the most from the 10% income tax credit!!!
Cudos to the Democrats!!
We all know the the Christie will just veto this anyways! Then we will remember the next time during the elections!!
Jack and Bob go to the store for drinks. Jack is wealthy and Bob is poor, so Jack offers his friend Bob to pay for his drinks. Bob drinks $50 worth, and Jack drinks $50 worth. Together the bill comes to $100. Jack pulls out a crisp $100 bill and hands it to the bartender, and tells him, “I am paying for my bill, and for good buddy Bob’s bill.”
But then, the bartender tells Jack: “We’re having a huge sale tonight. Everything is 10% off. Your bill is just $90.
So Jack hands the bartender the crisp $100 bill, and receives $10 change, bringing the entire tab to just $90.
Just then, Bob opens his mouth: “That’s not fair! You gave Jack $10 back because he is rich. I am poor, why should I lose out? I also want $10 back”
And that, my friends, is what liberalism and socialism is all about.
This poor person couldn’t contemplate that he doesn’t deserve the $10 back because IT WAS NEVER HIS MONEY IN THE FIRST PLACE.
If you don’t pay taxes, why should the government give you a refund on something YOU NEVER PAID??????
Oh, and did the author forget to mention that if property taxes went up 20% under Christie, its because the Democrats in the Legislature STOPPED Republican Christie from lowering the tax rates and putting caps on property tax increases, even though Republlican Christie TRIED to lower taxes?? OOOOOPS, how can I forget, a liberal democrat wrote this article, so of course he wouldn’t thinkof mentioning it. This liberal democrat probably forgot to mention also that property taxes in New Jersey DOUBLED under the administrations of Democrat Corzine and Democrat McGreevy, but STABILIZED under Republican Christie DESPITE the Democrats trying to block every tax decrease that Christie tried.
Unbelievable the hypopcrisy of the Democrats and the naivety of their constituents.
Margaret Thatcher said it best:
“The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money to spend”
“that would provide relief against property taxes that have soared a net 20 percent under Republican Gov. Chris Christie.”
Not sure where this comes from – but my property taxes ‘soared’ under the former (moderated) , sorry, I mean Gov. Corzine.
Thank you Yid , some people just don’t get it !!!
How can the Democrats blame Gov Christie for this mess? they said he is only in the office for 2 years, this mess has been building since Whitman was Gov. Did they say how they were going to make up the lost revenue?
Way to go speaker oliver. keep those income tax dollars flowing in so we can continue to pour state money down the drain known as the abbot districts at all the other state residents expense. Democrats love property tax rebates cause next year its a lot easier to say we don’t have money for rebates because our public schools need more funding. its a lot harder to raise income tax rates once they are lowered.
Gov. Christie confiscated the Property Tax Rebates even tho he had promised not to touch them. That cost every senior citizen $1,250 or a 20-25% increase in real estate taxes. It also cost most working families approximately 20%. Since most seniors do not have much of a state income tax, the 10% tax break does them no good. Property tax relief is what’s needed. Seniors are fleeing NJ due to the high property taxes.
Wealthy people are fleeing the state in droves, because they don’t want to pay such high taxes. So now when they leave, they pay zero taxes. So now, because we raised taxes on the wealthy, they leave, they now pay zero taxes (they don’t live here anymore) plus they don’t spend their money here anymore. So its a net loss for new jersey every time you raise taxes on the wealthy. But only a stupid liberal would see the gain in raising taxes.