Debunking The Right About Higher Taxes In Maryland

I usually have some pretty good debates with my fathers lawyer who is a Republican. He always likes to blame Democrats for the problems we face in our state and in our country (like all good Republicans, right).

Anyway, so he recently said how one third of the rich people in this state have since moved or changed their permanent residences due to O’Malley hiking up their taxes. So, what the Right likes to think is that it drove out rich people and increased taxes on the working. They’re correct, but let’s take a look at the numbers:

The increase on the rich of they “grinned and bared it” would be another $106,000,000 revenue to the state.

In reality it put us in the hole -$100,000,000. (Figures from the Wall Street Journal.)

So that’s a -$206,000,000 swing that we have to make up to (baring that the tax increase on the rich would balance the budget) keep the budget balanced for the year. In other words, Maryland needs to make up $206,000,000 MORE than last year.

According to Wikipedia, the population of Maryland is 5,633,600 people. Assuming that only half pay taxes, which is more than fair in my opionion, that leaves us with 2,816,800 tax payers.

Doing our math on this:

$206,000,000/2,816,800 = $73.13 per tax payer

So, the Right (and some Democrats no doubt) lead you to believe that increasing taxes on the rich will drive them away leaving only the middle and lower classes to make up the difference. Sorry but I’m a lot happier paying barely $100 more A YEAR than other alternatives… look what California is facing. Also keep in mind that inflation is a little more than 4% a year so an extra $100 per tax payer may not be so bad.

Of course this blog is assuming the rich were driven out because of higher taxes. One article from the Baltimore Sun actually suggests it’s due to the estate tax being so high in Maryland.