The Pennsylvania state budget remains long overdue, mostly due to Gov. Wolf’s misconstrued idea of compromise. He continues to insist on a severance tax to increase education spending, but a breakdown of his proposal shows most of the money for education comes from other tax increases.
CF’s Matt Brouillette joined Paul Guggenheimer on WESA’s Essential Pittsburgh radio show to discuss Gov. Wolf’s proposed severance tax.
Matt reminds listeners that Pennsylvania already has a severance tax–called an Impact Fee. “While we don’t call it a severance tax, we have an effective severance tax that the Independent Fiscal Office has said it is about 4.7%”.
A severance tax, as Matt points out, would bring economic harm not just to the natural gas industry, but to all Pennsylvanians. This includes $180 million more in higher utility taxes for poor and middle class families and 4,138 fewer private sector jobs in 2017.
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