The NC House is considering a billion-dollar tax increase that includes two new marginal tax rates on upper-income North Carolinians: 8.25 percent for taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 to $500,000; and 8.5 percent for taxpayers with incomes above $500,000.
Few Locker Room readers will pay these higher income taxes directly. But if you are employed in North Carolina, then it is likely that people who makes decisions about your economic future ? executives, owners, or investors ? would themselves be subject to the higher marginal rates. So you might well bear some of the cost of the tax hike indirectly, through lower wages or lost jobs.
As far as I can determine, these higher income taxes would put North Carolina in an elite class of states. Only California, Iowa, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia would have equivalent or higher tax rates on income.
It?s an elite class of states dedicated to the proposition that high-earning professionals, managers, entrepreneurs, and investors deserve to be punished.
