By Dari Kotzker
NJ Today
On a day when taxes are due, the governor announced on a New Jersey 101.5 radio show a proposed tax relief plan for middle and working class families. Through the governor’s conditional veto of a bill to increase earned tax credit for the working poor, he outlined his plan.
“Essentially the plan is this. That if you make $400,000 or less in New Jersey, you will get a 10 percent credit towards your property taxes up to $10,000, so it will be up to a $1,000 credit, be phased in over four years and also we would increase the earned income tax credit for working class folks,” Gov. Chris Christie said.
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“I think it’s ironic that the governor’s proposing a new property tax relief, when he hasn’t funded the property tax relief in this current budget. He can’t pay for the property tax relief in this current budget and that’s why he’s delaying it until next year,” Democratic gubernatorial candidate Barbara Buono said.
Last year, the Democrats set aside money in the budget for a tax cut if revenue collections improved. So, the governor added in his conditional veto what he calls a “circuit breaker provision.”
“If they don’t believe the revenue’s there to support it, they can pass a concurrent resolution for the Assembly and Senate, which does not need my signature stopping the tax cut at any time,” Christie said.
Senate President Steve Sweeney said the governor notified him of this announcement over the weekend. Sweeney says as of now, the revenues are not there, and he won’t know the real finances until May or June. Christie said today that New Jersey’s exceeded projections on revenues for four months in a row.
“As of today, we’re $302 million shy plus they moved the tax rebate out into another calendar year which is $400 million,” Sweeney said. “I’ve been open and said this all along, I think the majority leader and everybody’s been open to a tax cut if the numbers work.”
Even though it’s an election year, Sweeney says this announcement won’t hurt Democrats.
“Because the governor said it, I’ve already agreed to the Democrats’ tax cut, not his. Ours impacts 95 percent of the people, his impacted five. We would remind people what he wanted and what we wanted and he agreed to ours,” Sweeney said.
Assembly Republican leader Jon Bramnick has already called for a special legislative session to consider this proposal. Other Republican leaders agree this needs to be done as soon as possible.
“We need to make the state more and more affordable for every family and every business that’s located here and this is a good step in that direction,” said Sen. Tom Kean Jr.
If approved, the tax plan would take effect beginning Jan. 1, 2013, and people would see their first credit a year from today.