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Republicans Angry with Wolf Over Reports of Sales Tax Hike

wolf-sadRepublicans are accusing Gov. Tom Wolf of breaking a campaign promise.

In the last few days, the Governor has revealed some of the details of his upcoming budget address.

As KDKA’s Jon Delano reported, this will involve a mix of tax hikes and tax cuts.

One of the increases is reported to be bumping the state sales tax up from 6% to 6.6% and expanding said tax to cover clothing and professional services.

This has the Republican Party of Pennsylvania up in arms alleging that Wolf is flip-flopping from his stance during his 2014 gubernatorial campaign.

“Governor Wolf is breaking his promise to voters not to raise the sales tax after less than two months in office,” Republican Party of PA Communications Director Megan Sweeney said.

“Throughout the course of his campaign, Governor Wolf gave very few specifics about his plans for Pennsylvania but clearly portrayed himself as an opponent of raising the sales tax, only to break his promise to the voters with this first major act.”

Citing a July 2014 report from the Associated Press, state Republicans point out that Wolf said he did not support an increase in sales tax because he felt like the burden fell on low-income consumers.

“Does Governor Tom Wolf still believe that raising the sales tax would disproportionately hurt lower-income Pennsylvania like he said in July?” Sweeney said.

“When did Governor Wolf decide to admit his support for drastically raising the sales tax?”

Wolf will officially propose his first budget as Governor next Tuesday in front of the State Legislature. Of course, whatever he proposes will require legislative support from Republicans who hold the majority in both the State House and Senate.

20 Responses

  1. You expected a politician to keep a campaign promise? Wolf was working for Rendell as his tax man. Before the end of this year Wolf will have the State in a massive deficit and the Libs with cover for him by blaming Corbett who was incompetent also. Neither party gets it and never will. Suffer because you deserve it.

  2. Unsanctioned R- I don’t know if they pulled it out of the ether or someplace the sun don’t shine, but the fact is all the article says is reports, not unnamed sources or any indication that it might have come from the some Corbett holdover leaking info. That’s what made me think the RSC was just setting up a straw man to knock down.

  3. Rick, you really think 6.6% was just pulled from the ether? The reason the administration floats it is because they want to find out how much they may have screwed up before making anything official.

  4. You gotta love this. First the R’s take a news story that says there are a mix of tax hikes and cuts. No mention of sales tax. Then they say there are “reports of a sales tax hike that covers clothing and services” And of course they are outraged. Nothing like building your own rumor and then reacting angrily.

    I don’t know if there will be a hike in the sales tax or not, but neither does anyone else. So the RSC should save their outrage for facts and not rumors that they start themselves.

  5. The Governor’s plan sounds almost identical to House Bill 76 and Senate Bill 76, legislation that would completely eliminate the school property tax, but without the actual elimination. His plan just won’t work without capping or eliminating the property tax because the revenue sources cannot keep pace with the property tax increases and the property tax will eventually rise to its previous levels but with new taxes to pay.

    If he wants to go this far, why not just support HB/SB 76 and get rid of this onerous tax completely?

  6. A sales tax increase sucks, but until we get a progressive income tax structure there will be regressive tax hikes. I’d rather the hike be in sales tax than income tax, assuming there is no income tax hike in the near future.

  7. There’s never enough revenue to redistribute for you pinkos. The record-setting Corbett budget included.

  8. This should come to no surprise,This is what he pitched when he was head of the revenue department,under rendell.

  9. Way to start your term as Governor, Mr. Wolf. Less than a month into office you just proved that you were lying to PA voters last year by saying you would not raise the state’s sales tax. Can’t say I’m surprised.

  10. Yet another one term Tom. This guy could only win a campaign against an empty suit with a garbage political operation. Luckily he was up against just that with Team Corbett. 2017 will be an absolute beat down for Wolf if things continue on this arc.

  11. What a shock! If I had a nickel for every two-faced Democrat, well, I’d just be more rich I guess. But, that’s still an awful lot of nickels.

  12. Peggy, keeping bridges from collapsing is a core function of government that Republicans can get behind.

  13. Give me a break – what did Corbett do? Oh, that’s right he raised fees, not taxes on gas, car registration, license. Where were the Republican’s when Corbett did this?

  14. Wolf better watch what he does. If he breaks his promises, he’ll find himself watching his successor take office in 2019. Things are already expensive as it is and an increase in the sales tax will make it worse. A sales tax increase is not the answer. The middles class deserves a break and he would be doing anything but with an increase in the sales tax.

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