Transportation and Climate Initiative a bad deal for New Hampshire

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The regional cap-and-tax scheme called the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) is a bad deal for New Hampshire, the initiative organizers’ own projections show.

Modeled on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the TCI would cap carbon emissions from transportation sources (vehicles) and force fuel distributors to buy carbon allowances. A declining cap would force distributors to buy more allowances annually. The hope is to compel a switch to non-fossil fuels or to discourage driving by making it uncomfortably expensive.

Naturally, the costs of buying the allowances would be passed on to consumers. In effect, the TCI imposes an additional fossil fuel tax on top of the state and federal gas taxes consumers already pay.

The cost to consumers would be enormous. On December 17th, the TCI organizers released the results of their own analysis of the program’s impact. They project that the carbon allowances would generate revenue of between $1.4 billion and $5.6 billion annually in the 12-state TCI region (plus the District of Columbia), which covers Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states, including New Hampshire.

That would be a cost of between $14 billion and $56 billion over the decade spanning from 2022-2032.

But the TCI organizers’ own projections show that almost all of the carbon emissions reduction projected during that decade can be attributed to existing trends and not to the TCI scheme.

In August, they projected a baseline reduction in carbon emissions of “roughly 20 percent” without the TCI.

“Total gasoline and diesel consumption and CO2 emissions both fall by roughly 20% from 2022 through 2032 as a result of increased fuel economy in light and heavy-duty vehicles and increased LDV EV shares,” according to the organizers’ own analysis. (LDV EV = light duty vehicle electric vehicle.)

In a presentation released on December 17th, TCI organizers projected that the TCI would cause carbon emissions to fall by approximately 1-5 percentage points above the roughly 20 percent that will occur under existing policies.

The worst-case scenario projection was a 20 percent drop in carbon emissions from 2022-2032, which could be as little as a fraction of a percentage point above the baseline projection. The best-case scenario projection was a 25 percentage point reduction, which would be, at best, 6 percentage points above the baseline.

Understanding the baseline is critical because groups that support the TCI are already claiming it will produce up to a 25 percent reduction in carbon emissions in the region. That is false. Roughly 4/5ths of that reduction will happen anyway, the TCI organizers’ own projections show.

At best, the TCI would reduce carbon emissions of a little more than 5 percent in 10 years — at a cost of $56 billion in that best-case scenario. Without the TCI, carbon emissions are projected to fall by roughy four times that amount. If the TCI’s worst-case scenario occurs, the cost would be $14 billion to achieve an emissions reduction roughly 1/20th the size of what would happen anyway.

The TCI organizers projected that their initiative would cause gas taxes to rise by 5-17 cents per gallon if distributors passed the costs on to consumers (which they would). That seemingly small figure would extract billions of dollars from the economy, giving it to governments to distribute to projects that they favor but that consumers might not. In fact, the whole point is to replace consumer and investor choices with those made by government officials.

The program’s assumed effectiveness relies heavily on the premise that government officials will spend billions of dollars in ways proven to be effective at generating additional carbon reductions. Not only would those projects have to be effective on their own, they would have to be more effective than the choices that otherwise would have been made by business, entrepreneurs and consumers in the absence of the TCI.

Rather than forcibly extract billions of dollars from consumers in yet another heavy-handed attempt to control people’s behavior, governments should scrap this carbon tax scheme and let the market continue to generate solutions.

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The 2019 business rate cuts made N.H. more economically competitive

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The business tax cuts that took effect this past January made New Hampshire more economically competitive, as supporters predicted, not less, as opponents suggested.

New Hampshire rose one spot this year to post the sixth-best business tax climate in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation’s 2019 rankings.

No other New England state ranks in the top 30. Maine (33), Massachusetts (36) and Rhode Island (39) are in the 30s, while Vermont (44) and Connecticut (47) are in the bottom ten.

This is exactly what the rate cuts were intended to do.

Many states are attractive to investors and entrepreneurs because of natural or cultural amenities. Massachusetts, with an excellent deep water harbor and numerous top universities, is the perfect example. States that lack big harbors, long coastlines, natural trading centers, etc., have to rely on their own ingenuity to create a more vibrant economic environment.

New Hampshire, relatively remote and mountainous, is at a natural economic disadvantage, relatively speaking. Yet “the New Hampshire Disadvantage” is not a thing. (It’s more of a Vermont thing.)

Instead, we boast of the New Hampshire Advantage, which is the result of policies deliberately crafted to make the state more economically attractive than its remote location would suggest.

Those policies have worked, and they continue to work. With no broad-based tax and, finally, regionally competitive business tax rates, Granite Staters have made their home a more attractive place to do business than either of our also remote northern New England neighbors.

Low business tax rates along with an overall low tax burden is the combination that produces the most business-friendly tax environment, the Tax Foundation report shows. Eight of the top ten states lack at least one broad-based tax, such as an income or a sales tax.

Of the top ten, only the bottom two (Utah, 9, and Indiana 10) have all major taxes. But they differ from many other states in levying those at low rates among a broad base.

With the recent success in lowering business tax rates, lawmakers will find it challenging to further enhance the New Hampshire Advantage through the manipulation of tax rates in the near future.

This suggests that more promising gains can be achieved by working on other impediments to growth and entrepreneurship, such as housing and occupational licensing regulations, overly burdensome business regulations and energy policy.

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Tax incentive scams exposed in N.J., Maryland

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Economic development tax incentives continue to shrivel under the gaze of the green eye shades.

Recent scandals involving these corporate welfare programs in Maryland and New Jersey offer cautionary tales for lawmakers tempted to join this money-losing game.

On Thursday, an executive admitted to a New Jersey task force that his company’s application for that state’s tax incentive program contained false information. The application stated that the company, Rainforest Distribution, was considering moving to Orangeburg, N.Y.

“At that point in time we had no intention of moving to Orangeburg,” the CEO said.

The application was filled out with the help of a consultant who was familiar with the state’s tax credits. To meet the tax credit criteria, she falsely claimed that the company might move out of state. The state never verified the claim before awarding the business $2.4 million in incentives to move to Bayonne, N.J.

The New Jersey tax credit program has been plagued by scandals, more of which continue to be discovered by reporters. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported this week how weak controls and questionable deals allowed connected investors to make millions on a property sold for about $20 million less than market value. The building, coincidentally, had been built in the 1990s as part of another publicly funded effort to keep GE from moving. (GE moved.)

Meanwhile, in Maryland, a state audit (DOC19) published in September exposed a shocking lack of controls in that state’s numerous tax credit programs, which hand out tens of millions of dollars.

The Maryland Department of Commerce “failed to monitor recipients of its programs for compliance” with applicable laws and regulations, the audit concluded.

For programs that required companies to create certain numbers of jobs, for instance, the department did not check payroll records but took company statements at face value.

In one case, the department awarded $5.5 million for a project that was ineligible because it consisted of “a sale and purchase transaction between related parties.”

Rather than being a valuable economic development tool, state tax incentives create incentives and opportunities for insider dealing and abuse of taxpayer funds.

Companies have incentives to cozy up to elected officials and bureaucrats, and to fudge forms. Public officials famously have less rigorous standards for giving away other people’s money than investors have for giving away their own, which is why these programs are infamous for well-connected businesses getting the better of taxpayers.

Elected officials have incentives to produce headlines and ribbon-cutting ceremonies, not returns on investment.

These latest stories offer additional cautionary tales for legislators.

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Stabilizing business tax rates at last (for two years, anyway)

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Throughout 2019’s prolonged budget debate, two competing claims dominated the dispute over business tax rates. This week’s budget deal confirms conclusively which side was correct.

For months, Democratic leaders in the Legislature claimed that their budget — the one Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed — “stabilized” business tax rates. The budget did not raise taxes, they said repeatedly, but maintained existing tax rates and only eliminated tax cuts that were scheduled to take place in the future.

Republican Gov. Chris Sununu countered by accusing legislators of raising both the 2019 business tax rates and the 2021 rates.

The budget compromise Gov. Sununu signed this week reveals the truth. Unlike the vetoed state budget, this one actually keeps business tax rates the same for 2019 and 2020. It confirms that legislative leaders were incorrect when they claimed that their previous budget did not raise taxes.

On Jan. 1, 2019, the Business Profits Tax rate dropped from 7.9 percent to 7.7 percent and the Business Enterprise Tax rate dropped from 0.675 percent to 0.6 percent.

The budget that Gov. Sununu vetoed raised those rates back to their 2018 levels of 7.9 percent and 0.75 percent. It did so immediately, not in the future. It further eliminated the reductions (to 7.5 percent and 0.5 percent) scheduled to take place in 2021.

The governor insisted that the 2019 tax rates remain intact. Legislators insisted that rates return to their 2018 levels. There seemed to be no middle ground. Until this week.

How did this budget bring the two sides to agreement?

It did so by keeping this year’s tax rates intact and using revenue targets to trigger future changes.

The compromise budget keeps this year’s rates at 7.7 percent and 0.6 percent. Legislative leaders do not call this a tax cut. That is an admission that their previous budget did, in fact, raise business tax rates in 2019, not just in the future.

Under the compromise, if total general and education fund revenue for the current state fiscal year neither rises nor falls by 6 percent or more, those tax rates remain in place through the next fiscal year.

That is, the rates remain stable if revenue remains stable. At last, the budget “stabilizes” business tax revenue.

However, if total revenue rises by 6 percent or more, business tax rates will fall to the rates they were already scheduled to hit in 2021: 7.5 percent and 0.5 percent.

If total revenue falls by 6 percent or more, business tax rates will automatically snap back to their 2018 levels of 7.9 percent and 0.675 percent. This is another admission that the vetoed budget raised, rather than stabilized, business tax rates.

In essence, each side is betting that the economy will turn in their political favor in the next year.

In this deal, Democrats seem to be taking the bigger risk. To get what they have spent the better part of this year advocating, they need the economy to tank.

They have insisted that “out-of-state corporations” are unfairly undertaxed and that the state desperately needs more revenue. To achieve both, they have advocated higher business tax rates. Yet they get those higher rates only if state revenue comes in more than $155.8 million below expectations.

(Revenues have fallen slightly so far this fiscal year, but not at a rate that would trigger the tax increase.)

Gov. Sununu, on the other hand, gets two additional years of stable, relatively low tax rates (2019 and 2020). In the third year, he gets either a continuation of those rates or an additional tax cut unless state revenues quickly crater.

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Film production incentives flop in state capitals

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Dazzled by the allure of Hollywood, some New Hampshire legislators have spent years trying to create a state tax incentive program for the film production industry.  These efforts have died like a B-movie villain year after year, but they return from the grave at the start of each new session.  Research from other states shows that these incentives cost more than they bring in.  They are worse investments than Pauly Shore movies.

After expanding in the first decade of the 20th century, state financial incentives for the film industry suffered a nationwide retreat in the second decade as states abandoned them after seeing the terrible returns.  In this briefing paper, we show that New Hampshire legislators should forget these financial flops and focus instead on maintaining the state’s regime of low taxes for all businesses.

The state film production incentive highlight reel is a disaster:

  • A report from Massachusetts found that from 2006-2015 its program produced just 14 cents of new tax revenue per dollar spent on the program, only 34.3 percent of credit-eligible spending was in-state, and net generated in-state spending was less than the value of the tax credits.
  • A review of Rhode Island’s program concluded that, at best, it lost $1.8 million per year in tax revenue, and that it produced just 94 new film industry jobs in 13 years.
  • Georgia’s program, the most generous in the country, has spent more than $4 billion on production incentives over the last 10 years, but “the return on investment appears to be quite small,”  as each new full-time job in the industry has cost taxpayers at least $119,000.

Read the full the briefing paper here to see why New Hampshire should avoid these financial flops: Bartlett Brief – Film Production Incentives.

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Expanding the tobacco tax to non-tobacco products is bad policy

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SUMMARY: Both the Democratic Legislature and Republican Gov. Chris Sununu included in their budgets an expansion of the state tobacco tax to electronic cigarettes. Bipartisan support for this policy is cause for concern because of its tax and health implications.

New Hampshire has no broad-based sales tax on goods, but it does have “sin” taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Legislators and the governor this year have proposed expanding the sin tax on tobacco to devices known as electronic cigarettes. 

This expansion is pitched not as a tax increase, but as a technical correction to an existing tax. But the measure is more complicated than that. For starters, the tobacco tax exists to discourage the “sin” of tobacco smoking. But e-cigarettes contain no tobacco. 

Current law (RSA 78:1) defines tobacco products as those that contain both tobacco and nicotine. E-cigarettes can discharge nicotine, a tobacco byproduct, but no e-cigarette burns tobacco. To get around that, the revision changes the “and” to “or.” The tobacco tax is thus changed to a tobacco or nicotine tax.

Nicotine is derived primarily from tobacco, but it does occur naturally in some other plants. It is habit-forming, like caffeine, but is not a carcinogen. It does not have the same health impacts as tobacco, and it is not always derived from tobacco. E-cigarette manufacturers are increasingly making their products with synthetic nicotine. 

This new version of the tobacco tax, therefore, applies this sin tax to products that contain no tobacco and increasingly contain nothing derived from tobacco either. 

An exemption that discourages kicking the habit 

Lawmakers recognized that this expansion would tax consumer goods that help smokers quit the habit. The proposed law supposedly avoids this negative effect by excluding from taxation “any product that has been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration for sale as a tobacco cessation product and is being marketed and sold exclusively for such approved use.”

How many e-cigarettes does this exempt? None. No e-cigarette currently on the U.S. market fits into that tightly worded exclusion. 

Worse, the exclusion ignores studies that have shown electronic cigarettes in general to be effective at helping people quit smoking — more effective, even, than FDA-approved methods.

  • A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February found that “e-cigarettes were more effective for smoking cessation than nicotine-replacement therapy, when both products were accompanied by behavioral support.” In that study, e-cigarettes were almost twice as effective than alternatives. The abstinence rate after one year was 18% for people who switched to e-cigarettes and 9.9% for people who chose a different nicotine-replacement product.
  • A study published in 2016 in the British Medical Journal found that “(a)mong those making a quit attempt, use of e-cigarettes as a cessation aid surpassed that of FDA-approved pharmacotherapy.” Long-term e-cigarette users had a 42.4% cessation rate vs. 14.2% for short-term e-cigarette users and 15.6% for those who didn’t use e-cigarettes. The report’s understated conclusion was that “long-term use of e-cigarettes was associated with a higher rate of quitting smoking.”
  • A 2015 study by Public Health England, a government agency similar to our FDA, found that “e-cigarettes are around 95% less harmful than smoking” and “there is no evidence so far that e-cigarettes are acting as a route into smoking for children or non-smokers.” 

Lawmakers acknowledge the value of excluding from taxation products that help people quit smoking. Yet they define those exempted products not by their actual effectiveness, but by their endurance of a lengthy and costly federal regulatory process. (The average FDA approval time for medical devices is seven years and costs millions of dollars, a 2016 review found.) 

With studies showing that e-cigarettes can be more effective than FDA-approved smoking cessation products, this proposed law would encourage smokers to use less-effective smoking-cessation products while discouraging them from using more effective ones. 

E-cigarettes are not actually cigarettes 

This tobacco tax expansion also is based on misclassifying e-cigarettes as cigarettes. 

Under existing state law, an e-cigarette is not a cigarette. To be a cigarette, it must contain tobacco. E-cigarettes are tobacco-free alternatives to cigarettes. Manufacturers market these devices as “cigarettes” because the term is familiar and because the devices can deliver the nicotine fix smokers crave. But they are not tobacco products. 

Changing the definition of “tobacco product” to cover products that contain no tobacco is bad policy and bad precedent. In this case it also would discourage people from transitioning from real cigarettes to much healthier, tobacco-free e-cigarettes. 

Impact on the New Hampshire Advantage

Finally, there is a potentially large impact on small businesses, particularly convenience stores in border towns. 

On July 1, Vermont’s 92% tax on e-cigarettes took effect. Maine’s governor this month signed a law taxing e-cigarettes at 43% of the wholesale price. Massachusetts is considering a 75% vaping excise tax. 

As our neighbors attempt to squeeze revenue out of products proven to help smokers quit, New Hampshire would be wise to remain an island of sanity and sound policy. New Hampshire’s lack of a tax on these products would encourage cross-border sales and further entrench the New Hampshire Advantage. Following our neighbors in adopting a poorly reasoned tax that comes with negative health effects would be a mistake. 

Download a pdf version of this report: JBC 20-21 E-cigarette Tax Brief.

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Dispelling myths about business taxes and the Legislature’s 2020-2021 budget

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Some supporters of the Legislature’s 2020-2021 budget are making inaccurate claims about its business tax provisions.

1. They claim that the budget’s tax increases apply only to rate reductions that are scheduled to take place in the future, and not to current-year tax rates.

2. They claim that the existing business tax rates and the lower rates scheduled to take effect in 2021 are tax cuts for “out-of-state corporations.” This brief shows how those claims are incorrect. 

Read our brief here: Bartlett Brief 20-21 Budget Biz Taxes.

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Legislature’s budget imposes retroactive tax increase on N.H. employers

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The legislative budget finalized on Wednesday and Thursday exposes most New Hampshire businesses to a retroactive tax increase, Department of Revenue Administration data show. 

The Committee of Conference budget raises the rates at which employers in New Hampshire have been taxed since January 1. Because it applies to taxes already paid, it would force thousands of New Hampshire businesses to adjust their tax filings. Businesses pay their taxes quarterly, not annually. 

 

Current business tax rates for 2019 are:

Business Profits Tax: 7.7%;

Business Enterprise Tax: 0.6%.

 

The committee of conference budget tax rates for 2019 are:

Business Profits Tax: 7.9 p%;

Business Enterprise Tax: 0.675%.

 

That is a tax increase. Any legislator who says the Committee of Conference budget only repeals tax cuts that are scheduled to take place in the future is incorrect.

Who is paying the 7.7 and 0.6 percent rates now?

Ninety percent of New Hampshire businesses are “calendar year filers,” which means that their fiscal year is the calendar year, Shaun Thomas, counsel for the Department of Revenue Administration, confirmed in an interview Thursday. 

All of those filers are being taxed right now at the 2019 rates, as are businesses with fiscal years that started between January 2nd and today.

So far this year, 15,500 businesses have already filed quarterly tax payments, according to the DRA. Those businesses are being taxed at the 7.7 percent BPT and 0.6 percent BET rates. (About half of the state’s businesses don’t earn enough money to owe taxes.) 

The only businesses not currently paying quarterly taxes at the 2019 rates are firms whose fiscal years haven’t started yet. But as soon as those fiscal years start, they will be paying at the 2019 rates. 

If the Committee of Conference budget becomes law, the 15,500 employers who have already filed estimated taxes would be subject to a rate increase on taxes they have already paid. For them, the state will have imposed a retroactive tax increase. They would have to increase their upcoming 2019 quarterly filings to make up the difference. 

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Legislators vote to raise business taxes, not ‘repeal future tax cuts’

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The Senate this week joined the House passing tax increases on New Hampshire businesses. Some reports give the impression that the House and Senate budgets would not raise taxes, but would repeal future tax cuts. Here we explain why that is not correct and the budgets raise business taxes, including the rates that businesses will pay this year.

Under current law, the business profits tax rate is 7.7 percent and the business enterprise tax rate is 0.6 percent for “taxable periods” that end “on or after December 31, 2019.” 

Both the House and Senate budgets would repeal those rates and replace them with rates of 7.9 percent and 0.675 percent, respectively. 

The budgets also would repeal the existing state law that lowers those rates further, to 7.5 percent and 0.5 percent, for taxable periods that end on or after Dec. 31, 2021.

Understanding how businesses pay taxes

What does it mean when state law declares that a tax rate applies to a “taxable period ending on or after December 31, 2019?” 

It does not mean that the tax rate takes effect on January 1, 2020.

A “taxable period” is not a calendar year. State law (RSA 77-A:1, IV) defines “taxable period” as a business’ fiscal year for federal income tax purposes. 

So a taxable period “ending on or after December 31, 2019” is a business’ fiscal year that starts in 2019 and ends on or after Dec. 31, 2019. 

A business will start to pay those tax rates in 2020, then, right? 

No. 

Businesses’ fiscal years do not always correspond with the calendar year. They can begin or end on any day of the year. 

Plus, businesses are required to pay taxes quarterly, not annually. 

Under New Hampshire law, any business with an estimated tax liability of more than $200 is required to estimate what its next year’s tax bill will be, and then submit 25 percent of that payment each quarter. 

Here is how that works.

In 2019, employers begin paying quarterly taxes for fiscal years that end “on or after December 31, 2019.”

For example, a business with a fiscal year that ends April 30, 2019, will start a new fiscal year on May 1, 2019. That new fiscal year will end April. 30, 2020. 

So starting on May 1, 2019, that company will be taxed at the rate in effect for “taxable periods ending on or after December 31, 2019.” It will make payments at that rate every four months throughout its tax year.

Under current law, companies with fiscal years starting May 1, July 1, and Oct. 1, 2019, will be making business profits tax payments at the 7.7 percent rate and business enterprise tax payments at the 0.6 percent rate this year. 

That’s why the House and Senate budgets do not just affect future tax rates that employers are not yet paying. The budgets would raise those fiscal year 2019 tax rates to 7.9 percent and 0.675 percent. 

So the House and Senate budgets would not merely not repeal future tax cuts, as is being reported. They would raise taxes on businesses this year.   

A tax increase is a tax increase

Furthermore, it is worth noting that “repealing a future tax cut” also is a tax increase. Those tax cuts are set in existing law. They apply automatically. To replace them with a higher rate is to raise taxes.

 

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Leaping on the income tax grenade

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In an extraordinary show of party discipline, Senate Majority Leader Dan Feltes and Finance Committee Chairman Lou D’Alessandro leapt into action Tuesday to quickly smother a political hand grenade tossed by freshman Sen. Jeanne Dietsch, D-Peterborough. They smothered it the old fashioned way — by throwing Sen. Dietsch on top of it. 

Sen. Dietsch committed a double offense against party electability. First, she introduced an amendment (to an unrelated bill) to impose a 6.2 percent payroll tax on income above the $132,900 Social Security tax cap. Social Security taxes are not collected on income above that level.

Sen. Dietsch portrayed the tax as a reasonable levy on a small number of rich Granite Staters. But its financial and political impact were obvious. The tax would hit about 42,000 people and raise about $300 million a year, the Department of Revenue Administration estimated. That’s no small levy.  

Her other mistake was to state the obvious. “This is an income tax,” she acknowledged. 

At that moment, a submarine dive alarm must have gone off in Sen. D’Alessandro’s head.

“Dive! Dive! Dive!”

Sen. D’Alessandro, a senior senator with slightly less leadership experience than Moses, was so eager to kill the proposal that he ignored or forgot proper procedure and moved the bill without acting on the amendment. He was later compelled to go back and call a vote. (The amendment failed 6-0, N.H. Business Review reported. 

What made the proposal so frightening that it rattled even “Lion” Lou D’Alessandro? There was no way to spin the tax away as anything other than what it was — an income tax. Everyone was admitting it. 

“This is an income tax, which I oppose,” Sen. Feltes said. 

Interestingly, Feltes has spent a good portion of this legislative session arguing that his own payroll tax (in Senate Bill 1, his paid family leave plan) is not an income tax. Republicans say it is. What’s the difference?

Feltes’ bill includes an 0.5 percent payroll tax. But he cleverly wrote the bill so that it labels the tax an “insurance premium payment.” 

In the bill’s language, the “insurance premium payments shall amount to 0.5 percent of wages per employee per week” and employers “have the option of paying some or all of the FMLI premium payments on behalf of employees, or may instead withhold or divert no greater than 0.5 percent of wages per week per employee to satisfy this paragraph.”

Feltes’ payroll tax is a tax on wages. It gives employers the option to pay the tax before allocating it to employees or after. In either case, it comes out of employee compensation.

In cases where employers choose to credit the tax to money already paid to employees, the only difference between Sen. Feltes’ and Sen. Dietsch’s taxes is the amount collected. They are both income taxes. 

By giving employers the option to pay the entire costs themselves, Feltes seeks to put the burden on businesses, not employees, and avoid the income tax label. But the tax is tied to employee compensation and would come from those funds. At the very least, as long as everyone is acknowledging that a direct payroll tax is an income tax, then SB 1 authorizes an income tax.

If you’re curious who voted for and against SB 1, the roll call votes are here. 

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