New Jersey has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation, and if your family earns between $40,000 and $80,000 annually, you are paying more than your fair share of taxes.
That’s the conclusion of an analysis by the New Jersey Policy Perspective, which found those middle-class families are paying a higher share of their income in state and local taxes than the state’s most wealthy residents, according to a story by NJ101.5.
While the state has taken steps to improve its tax code for families who are struggling, its still not doing enough to lower the cost of public college tuition or property taxes or to improve New Jersey Transit—items that impact both lower- and middle-class families in the state, according to the report.
Gov. Phil Murphy, who campaigned on a pledge to assist the state’s middle class, has instituted a program to bring free community college to the state’s lowest-income residents. Murphy says the state can’t yet afford to help middle-class families with increased community college aid.
New Jersey Policy Perspective is calling on the state to increase the sales tax, raise the tax on high-wage earners and restore the estate tax.
Murphy has embraced raising the sales tax and a so-called millionaires tax, arguing that residents won’t mind paying even more in taxes if they feel they are getting their money’s worth in state services. He also approved the latest hike in the gas tax, which brings the state to among the highest gas tax rates in the nation.
But hiking state taxes even further might be difficult, as Senate President Steve Sweeney has said the state must look to cut spending before looking to increase the already high tax burden. The sales tax, for instance, was reduced when the state instituted the first of what turned out to be two substantial hikes in the state gas tax.
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