Hold your wallets, folks. It’s tax time. That means last-minute number crunching and maybe a bit of daydreaming about what it might be like to live in another state.
Virginia tends to be right in the middle of the pack in terms of tax burden; not one of the states with the highest tax burdens by any means, but also not one of the lowest. Jaraod Walczak at the Tax Foundation one thing that makes Virginia stand out is an over-reliance on income tax revenue. While most states get about a third of their revenue from income taxes, Virginia gets more than half.
“There are potentially opportunities to diversify, not to create new taxes. Virginia already has all the major taxes, but to look at the relative share that comes from each of the major taxes at the state level.”
And then there’s all that debt. Yes it’s true the Virginia General Assembly is required to pass a balanced budget. But that doesn’t mean that the state hasn’t taken on debt over the years. And Bill Bergman at Truth in Accounting says some of it is hidden debt.
“Virginia is now including net pension liability on its balance sheet. But the retiree healthcare burden is also significant, and that’s still off the balance sheet. It will be coming on the balance sheet in the coming years.”
Overall, Bergman says, Virginia gets a C. That’s because the state doesn’t have enough assets to cover its debt