Indiana finished the fiscal year with a record six-billion dollars in reserves. That puts Hoosiers on pace for a third state tax rebate, even before legislators approve the second one.
Budget forecasters expected three-percent growth. They got triple that. Individual and corporate income taxes were 15-percent higher than expected, putting an extra one-point-two-billion dollars into the treasury. Office of Managemente and Budget Director Cris Johnston says the windfall may reflect higher wages, and a strong investment market that prompted more Hoosiers to pay estimated taxes.
Governor Holcomb has already asked legislators to pass a billion-dollar tax rebate, sending every taxpayer 225 dollars as a buffer against soaring prices. Johnston says the administration has no plans to seek a bigger rebate at the special legislative session which begins later this month. He says the same inflation putting pressure on consumers also creates economic uncertainty which could undermine growth in the second year of the state budget. Johnston says administration analysts concluded the billion-dollar proposal is a “prudent” level that allows help for taxpayers while keeping the state’s finances on sound footing.
The budget passed last year will wipe away a big chunk of the reserves, pouring two-and-a-half-billion dollars into the state’s unfunded teacher pension liability. Even with that payment and Holcomb’s rebate, the Legislative Services Agency forecast predicts a four-billion-dollar surplus by the end of the two-year budget next June 30. That’s nearly double the level which would trigger another refund under Indiana’s automatic rebate law.
Hoosiers are already receiving a 125-dollar automatic rebate in 2022 after the state posted a then-record four-billion-dollar surplus last year.
While House Speaker Todd Huston (R-Fishers) says House Republicans intend to support Holcomb’s rebate plan, other legislators in both parties are floating other ideas for the windfall. Indianapolis Senator Fady Qaddoura (D) has called for an immediate two-billion dollars in health and education spending, and an increase in the rebate to 400 dollars. Senate President Pro Tem Rod Bray (R-Martinsville) says Senate Republicans are considering a special-session package to offer Hoosiers inflation relief in “multiple ways,” and confirms Republicans may seek to pay down state debt. And legislators in both parties have urged expanding the rebate to people who don’t file tax returns.
Johnston says reducing Indiana’s debt load is always an option, but says the state has done so much already that it may not make economic sense to pay off the bonds which remain. And he says extending the rebate to nonfilers could prove difficult, starting with the task of identifying who and how many they are.
Johnston says the administration isn’t considering any new spending in the special session, though Holcomb says his budget proposal when the regular session convenes in January will call for more money for schools, public health, and the READI regional development fund, as well as raises for state employees.
16 comments
I’d like to know what happened to the first rebate. We’re still waiting snd waiting and…..
It’s “in the mail”
Haven’t even seen the first one!
When are they going to raise the minimum wage? Let the politicians try and live in 7.25 a hour.
So even as you are living through the results of artificial monetary policy, you are clamoring for more of it to try and fix the problems that those very policies caused?
Brilliant!
Wages are earned money, not “artificial policy.” No one can afford the current cost of living by themselves (much less supporting anyone else) on $7.25 an hour without additional income sources (such as all the social programs you also dislike). If you actually cared about improving the economy and not just making dumb, incorrect and politically-charged comments on every MNC article, you wouldn’t talk down someone asking for honest, livable wages. The people working for minimum wage do more actual work during their shift than most people in most jobs, especially more than the C-suite executives that seem to continue getting richer no matter what happens to the rest of us. They got idiots like you fighting people over crumbs while they take off with the whole damn cake.
If you don’t think a minimum wage is an artificial monetary policy, I don’t know what to tell you. If that person was worth more money to the employer, they’d be making it. No job will exist unless it brings more value to the employer than it costs. That is why sports stars get paid millions of dollars a year, because at the end of the day they STILL bring in more money than they cost. All of that, incidentally, is BEFORE we even get to the facts that a minimum wage hike is effectively a pay cut for everyone making above minimum wage and that hiking the minimum wage just puts more people at minimum wage.
Your criticism of my comments as “dumb” and “incorrect” have no weight when you don’t even understand basic economics. For the record, I don’t fault Valerie for wanting to earn more money. I did fault her for wanting the government to do more of the very things that made her current wages worth less. Those C-suite executives aren’t the ones who trashed the dollar!
Lets not hold our breath….
Rebate, that’s a joke, we all heard about one but as we all know, where is it???
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So why has most of us not received ours???
Put some of that into filling potholes
I have NOT received any rebate for any 1st, 2nd or if there is a 3rd???????????????
I have not received ANY rebate amount
Glad I am not alone in waiting as I am waiting too ….
I live in Pulaski county. If we over paid in State tax I’m really sure that we over paid in Pulaski taxes due to this stupid county has the highest taxes in Indiana.