Youngkin to prioritize cutting state taxes

By Tabitha Reeves

On Jan. 26, Gov. Glenn Youngkin was the keynote speaker at the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Day, where he emphasized the need to cut state taxes. Comparing Virginia to surrounding states, he explained why his administration believes that Virginia is too expensive and that a reduction in taxes can fix that.

After two years, they aim to have lowered taxes by $5 billion, given the $4 billion cut last year and the plan to cut another billion this year.

“We can do this,” Youngkin said. “For the typical Virginia family, collectively, it’ll mean almost $2,000 savings. That’s real money. It’s real money for hardworking families at a time when they need it.”

In terms of affordability, Youngkin stated that his administration is taking advantage of every savings opportunity possible, with a projected surplus of $3.6 billion that will fund tax relief. After just four months in office, they had already found a total of $1.6 billion that didn’t need to be spent.

“I defy any reasonable individual to make a legitimate argument saying we can’t do [this],” Sen. Tommy Norment (R-Williamsburg), who gave brief comments before Youngkin, said. “Because if an English history major can understand it, everybody in Virginia can get it.”

To depict the effects of overtaxation, Youngkin outlined three interrelated factors: employment, companies moving to the state and individuals who chose to stay or leave. He spent the most time on the first and last of those, explaining that the last factor is most important.

According to Younkin, immediately after the pandemic Virginia was 47th in the nation for job recovery. Since then, Virginia has moved to be in the top 20 for job recovery. There are still 125,000 unemployed Virginia residents that were employed before the pandemic.

Younkin expressed his satisfaction with the number of jobs obtained in the past year to move Virginia up in the rankings, but added that he wants to be number one. Comparatively, states like North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida and Texas have not only recovered all their lost jobs from the pandemic, but have gained over one million more.

“We have to do something different,” Youngkin said. “Now, the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and over again and expect the same outcome. We must do something different.”

The “something different” Youngkin referred to is to cut taxes.

He also cited that Virginia is going on its ninth year of more residents choosing to move away than move in. On the other hand, surrounding states, like North Carolina, are gaining numbers and not losing them.

“Why are people moving away?” Youngkin said. “And the simple answer is: Virginia’s too expensive. The most pressing part of that is taxes.”

Younkin pointed out that the states he had been comparing Virginia to throughout his speech, such as North Carolina, Texas and Georgia, either already had low taxes or have recently begun to lower taxes. He correlated the success of those states with a less expensive cost of living via tax reduction.

In its third-quarter 2022 study for the Cost of Living Data Series, the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center ranked Virginia 31st out of 50 states in terms of cost of living, when excluding Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. The higher the ranking, the lower the cost.

The states mentioned by Youngkin tended to rank higher than Virginia, indicating that they were less expensive overall. For example, North Carolina ranked 25th of 50, Texas 17th and Georgia 6th.

The costs included in the study were grocery, housing and utilities, amongst other necessities, without explicitly including cost of taxes.

Before concluding his speech, Youngkin did not fail to mention the positive aspects of Virginia. He stated that Virginians have an extraordinary quality of life, with some of the best universities in the nation and a “tremendous” workforce.

“I want to make it hard for Virginia families to choose to leave,” Youngkin said. “I want them to have the best jobs, the best education, the safest communities, the lowest cost of living, so when they sit around their kitchen tables in the evening and they say, ‘Where should we build our future?’ They’ll say, ‘Well, why would we do it anyplace else other than the Commonwealth of Virginia?’”