WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — Governor Tony Evers has announced a new proposal to return a portion of the nearly $5 billion state surplus back to taxpayers.
During a roundtable discussion in Wausau on Tuesday Evers said his plan would provide for a ten percent tax cut for anyone making less than $100,000 as a single filer or $150,000 for those filing jointly. The plan would also expand the homestead tax credit and Veteran and surviving spouse property tax credit. Other pillers of the plan include eliminating the minimum markup for gasoline and diesel fuel while also expanding the child and dependent care credit to 100% of the federal level.
“This is to relieve some of the inflationary pressures that we are facing,” said Evers. “We are just coming out of a pandemic, the state has excess funds, and we want to use those to provide tax credits and other support for people.”
All told the plan would return $600 million while still maintaining record balances in the state’s surplus, or rainy day, fund. Evers says how that would translate to taxpayers would depend on their situation, but notes that this plan would impact more people than his previous plan which called for direct payments to taxpayers along with other credits. “It’s different. For starters, it impacts more people. Hopefully, the Republicans will say ‘it’s a good idea.’”
Evers says at this time there is no plan to bring the proposal to the Republican-controlled legislature, which dismissed a previous plan from Evers earlier this year without discussion. He said at this time he doesn’t plan another special session but did encourage Republicans to consider the idea and bring their own proposals to the table as well.
“They haven’t come up with anything. It’d be great if we had some response from them saying ‘we could do this or we could do that’ because we have too much money in our coffers in Madison and we want to get it out to the people as soon as possible.
So Republicans jump on board, bring in another proposal, and let’s have at it,” added Evers
