Center for American Progress

How Ed Gillespie’s Virginia Tax Plan Stacks the Deck Against All but the Wealthiest Virginians
Article

How Ed Gillespie’s Virginia Tax Plan Stacks the Deck Against All but the Wealthiest Virginians

Authors Harry Stein and Alex Rowell discuss how the Gillespie tax plan primarily benefits the wealthy, ignores struggling families, jeopardizes vital services, and will not create jobs or grow the economy.

In March of this year, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie released his tax plan for the state. Since then, he’s been trying to convince voters that tax cuts targeting the rich will somehow help all Virginians. To do this, he’s dusting off the same playbook for trickle-down tax cuts that failed nationwide under President George W. Bush and more recently led to disaster in the state of Kansas. Many claims that Gillespie has made to sell his tax plan are false or dubious. Even the name of Gillespie’s tax plan, “Cutting Taxes For All Virginians” (emphasis in original), is erroneous because his plan leaves out many of the hardest-pressed Virginians who actually pay higher taxes under Virginia’s current system. Hardly any Virginia families living in poverty would get even a penny in tax cuts from the Gillespie tax plan.

The above excerpt was originally published in CAP Action. Click here to view the full article.

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Authors

Harry Stein

Director, Fiscal Policy

Alex Rowell

Policy Analyst