Monday, January 13, 2014<\/p>\n
A Governor\u2019s Warped Priorities
\nby Jason Bedrick<\/p>\n
The governor of New Hampshire just submitted an amicus brief in the lawsuit against the \u201cLive Free or Die\u201d state\u2019s scholarship tax credit program. Last year, Governor Maggie Hassan unsuccessfully sought its repeal. The brief offers nothing new in the way of legal arguments.<\/p>\n
As with the ACLU and, unfortunately, the trial court judge, the governor\u2019s brief tries to imagine a constitutional difference between tax credits and tax deductions and absurdly assumes that money that a private corporation donated to a private nonprofit that financially assists private citizens sending their children to private schools is somehow \u201cpublic\u201d money because the state could have collected it in taxes had the legislature so decided. This claim contradicts both logic and the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s holding in ACSTOv. Winn:<\/p>\n
Like contributions that lead to charitable tax deductions, contributions yielding [scholarship] tax credits are not owed to the State and, in fact, pass directly from taxpayers to private organizations. Respondents\u2019 contrary position assumes that income should be treated as if it were government property even if it has not come into the tax collector\u2019s hands. That premise finds no basis in standing jurisprudence. Private bank accounts cannot be equated with the \u2026 State Treasury.<\/p>\n
The Cato Institute submitted an amicus brief defending the constitutionality of the program back in November.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s noteworthy here is not the legal reasoning, but the governor\u2019s chutzpah. First, as the Union Leader noted, \u201cHassan is pushing state-funded, need-based scholarships for college students while trying to eliminate need-based scholarships for students in grades K-12.\u201d The governor\u2019s amicus brief does not explain why direct public expenditures that students can use at a Catholic college are perfectly constitutional but a low-income student using a tax-credit scholarships at a religious elementary or secondary school would, as her amicus brief melodramatically puts it, \u201cjeopardize both the hallowed underpinnings of religious tolerance and freedom, and the prohibition against entanglement made sacred by [the] New Hampshire Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Second, Hassan is a strong proponent of \u201cresearch and development\u201d tax credits that pick winners and losers among certain types of businesses and business activities, thereby distorting the market. Moreover, by the governor\u2019s faulty logic, these tax credits constitute direct subsidies of public funds to profit-seeking entities. R&D tax credits clearly reduce state revenue to fund activities that businesses are generally doing anyway for their own financial self-interest.<\/p>\n
By contrast, scholarship tax credits expand the market for private education without distorting it. Parents pick winners and losers among schools rather than the government. The corporations who receive the 85 percent tax credits do not benefit financially \u2013 indeed, they\u2019d be better off financially had they not donated at all. Moreover, the Josiah Bartlett Center projected that, if fully utilized, the scholarship tax credits would save New Hampshire taxpayers millions of dollars in the long run by reducing state expenditures by more than they would reduce state tax revenue.<\/p>\n
In short, Governor Hassan supports corporate welfare but opposes tax credits that assist low-income families seeking the best education for their children.<\/p>\n
Original source: http:\/\/www.cato.org\/blog\/governors-warped-priorities
\nUsed by permission of author, Honorable Jason Bedrick<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Monday, January 13, 2014 A Governor\u2019s Warped Priorities by Jason Bedrick The governor of New Hampshire just submitted an amicus brief in the lawsuit against the \u201cLive Free or Die\u201d state\u2019s scholarship tax credit program. Last year, Governor Maggie Hassan unsuccessfully sought its repeal. The brief offers nothing new in the way of legal arguments. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issues","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhhra.org\/hra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhhra.org\/hra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhhra.org\/hra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhhra.org\/hra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhhra.org\/hra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nhhra.org\/hra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":411,"href":"https:\/\/nhhra.org\/hra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions\/411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhhra.org\/hra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhhra.org\/hra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhhra.org\/hra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}