NJTV News correspondent Michael Aron reports:
The predominant topic in Trenton this season is, how will Gov. Phil Murphy get his budget passed? The governor has proposed taxing income over $1 million. He also wants to restore the sales tax, currently at 6.625 percent, to 7 percent where it’s been for a decade.
Legislative leaders have been noncommittal. They’ve called tax increases “a last resort.”
Now, a poll commissioned by New Jersey Policy Perspective, a liberal think tank, suggests the public supports Murphy’s taxes. Of 600 respondents, 70 percent support raising the income tax on households earning $1 million or more a year, while just 24 percent oppose. Fifty percent support reinstating a 7 percent sales tax, while only 37 percent oppose.
The head of the organization that commissioned the poll says, while taxes are generally unpopular, when you connect taxes to investments in key areas, the numbers change.
“This should give comfort to people who understand that, to members of the Legislature who know that we need to improve our investments in transportation, in school aid, in all of those things, property tax relief, put those together with higher taxes, it becomes possible,” said New Jersey Policy Perspective President Gordon MacInnes.
