HARTFORD (January 25, 2017): In response today’s report released by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, the following statement may be attributed to National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Connecticut State Director, Andrew Markowski:
The fact that the report begins by admitting that Connecticut has yet to recover from the great recession and then goes on to call for raising taxes to increase revenue is counter intuitive to the small business community. By its own admission, both local and state governments are struggling to sustain themselves. The solution to this problem is not to further damage our economic environment by artificially inflating revenue for municipalities; it is to reduce the size and scope of government drastically.
Expanding the sales tax, increasing our tax rate or making our tax structure more complicated than it already is will propel the state into a downward fiscal spiral. Small business owners have been doing more with less for years, and the time has come for Connecticut’s elected officials at all levels to do the same. We certainly encourage towns to engage in dialogue for shared services to increase efficiency but under no circumstances will increasing taxes provide a long-term, sustainable approach to correcting our fiscal situation.
