Main Street Alliance is thrilled that Governor Evers, Rep. Vining and Sen. Pfaff have reintroduced efforts to repeal the personal property tax in Wisconsin. Gov. Evers promised to cut middle class taxes when he ran for office. With a $480 million dollar tax cut earlier this year he has already been delivering on that promise. Repeal of the personal property tax would keep up this momentum for Main Street.
Shawn Phetteplace, State Manager for the Main Street Alliance of Wisconsin had this to say, “Our members are happy to pay their fair share of taxes to help fund roads, bridges, schools, healthcare and other critical government programs. The personal property tax, however, is overly burdensome, out-dated, and is more of a headache because of when it’s owed and how it’s done.”
“The costs of complying with the law are actually much higher than the actual underlying tax revenue generated. Repealing the personal property tax will give valuable time back to small business owners to focus on what they do best.”
Main Street Alliance also strongly supports efforts to ensure that the loss of personal property tax will not unfairly hurt local municipalities across our state. At a time when we’re still impacted greatly by the pandemic, and years of misguided efforts by the legislative majority have left local municipalities with reduced revenues, we need to make sure that this repeal doesn’t hurt the ability of local communities to recover from COVID-19.
We urge Speaker Vos and Senator LeMahieu to move this legislation without delay. The people of Wisconsin don’t care who gets credit, they just care that we get it done. Let’s stop playing politics and focus on the people of our state.
And instead of holding hearings on cultural war distractions let’s get back to the important work of helping small businesses recover, from Burlington, to Sheboygan, to Minocqua and beyond.
As an aside, MSA-WI would like to respond to the following quote tweet from the Wisconsin Senate Republicans yesterday…
And we want to reiterate why we support this effort. Because this is a thoughtful approach to dealing with the issue instead of the reckless version that was proposed by the legislative majority previously.
“Due to the haphazard process by which the bill was drafted and passed, Assembly Bill 191 could have had problematic ramifications for railroad taxes and the manufacturing and agriculture credit, as well as the potential for the state to lose millions in taxes owed by utility companies. Upon vetoing Assembly Bill 191, Gov. Evers called on Republicans in the Legislature to work with his administration and the Wisconsin Department of Revenue to pass a more comprehensive bill to repeal the personal property tax that addressed these problems.” (Source)
