The Tide has Turned Against PA Gov Wolf with Latest Tax Proposal

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tide has turnedOnce again PA Gov. Tom Wolf is proving himself to be a partisan hack, and certainly not up to the job the good people of Pennsylvania elected him to do. He's a typical tax and spend liberal (voted the most liberal governor in America by the non-partisan InsideGov, see PA Gov Tom “Severance Tax” Wolf: America’s Most Liberal Governor). Yesterday Wolf unveiled his latest budget proposal. The budget is all interconnected, and a jumbled mess, but the part we're interested in: He is still pushing for a severance tax. Instead of his original so-called "5%" severance tax on Marcellus Shale production, which according to Democrats at the Pennsylvania Budget Office would really be a 17.3% tax (see PA Official Admits Wolf Severance Tax Highest in Nation @ 17.3%), Wolf has dropped the rate from 5% to 3.5%. But here's the kicker. Wolf is keeping the extra tax of 4.7 cents per thousand cubic feet AND he will keep the existing impact fee, which has been estimated to equate to a 3.5% to 7% severance tax, depending on the source. ALL of the new tax (presumably not the impact fee, but the new 3.5% + 4.7 cents) would go to education--as a payoff for electing Wolf...

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