Senate Republicans Vote to Raise Property Taxes

April 5, 2011

“Senate Republicans voted to raise taxes the old-fashioned Pawlenty way by increasing property taxes and then saying they didn’t,” Wayne Cox, executive director of Minnesota Citizens for Tax Justice, said Tuesday.

“The no-new-taxes phase of this session is over,” Cox said. “Republicans in both the House and Senate have voted—for a second time—to raise property taxes on the middle class. It is no longer a question of whether taxes are being raised, but whose.”

Revenue Commissioner Dan Salomone said the effect of the Senate tax bill would be a $604 million increase in property taxes on homeowners over three years. In addition, renters would receive a 26% cut in renters’ property tax relief.  Salomone said “the increase in taxes will be almost 15 times greater for the lowest income Minnesotans than for the top 10%.”

He said the average property tax increase would be 4.5% for homesteads and 1.2% for businesses.

“The job-killers are winning at the Capitol,” Cox said. “State economist Tom Stinson said the Republican approach of cutting the most jobs and hence taking customers away from Minnesota’s businesses will be more harmful to the state’s economy than Governor Dayton’s plan to keep many more Minnesotans working and have those with top incomes pick up the tax increases.”