LEHIGH CO., Pa. – Lehigh County commissioners are getting ready to consider a proposal for a wealth tax.<\/p>\n
It’s an idea proposed by Lehigh County Controller Mark Pinsley, but it’s already getting a significant amount of push back. Pinsley said he came up with the proposal because Lehigh County has a budget problem.<\/p>\n
“This year, I think we’re overspending by three million dollars. I think next year is proposed five and a half million dollars, and it’s been a problem for a long period of time, which means we’re going to have to tax the citizens of Lehigh County,” said Pinsley.<\/p>\n
But Pinsley said he doesn’t want the County to raise property taxes if they can help it.<\/p>\n
“I’m not proposing a wealth tax. I’m proposing that they study the idea of having something other than property tax,” said Pinsley.<\/p>\n
That “something other” would be investments like stocks, bonds, and second homes, all taxed at 0.4%, but Pinsley said working families would be protected.<\/p>\n
“401K, pensions, other forms of retirement, none of that was looking at being taxed,” said Pinsley.<\/p>\n
It turns out, it’s not a new idea in Lehigh County.<\/p>\n
“This was used and it wasn’t working, so they got rid of it,” said former Lehigh County Executive Phillips Armstrong.<\/p>\n
Armstrong is talking about a vote by Commissioners in August of 1992. An article from the Morning Call at the time said the tax only applied to about 13,000 people, and it brought in about $2.5 million. Armstrong said if it was put back in place, those people might just leave.<\/p>\n
“Will small businesses then want to relocate? Will people who are retired, and have money tied up in investments, want to move out? We don’t want that to happen,” said Armstrong.<\/p>\n
Armstrong, as well as Commissioners Ron Bietler and Antonio Pineda, are now publicly against the proposal, but Pinsley said he’s open to other ideas. He just wants to save money for working families.<\/p>\n
“Is there a way that we don’t have to tax our middle class and working-class families? That’s the goal,” said Pinsley.<\/p>\n
Greater Lehigh Valley Realtors has also come out against the proposal and will be giving a presentation at the meeting Wednesday night. It all gets under way at the Historic Lehigh County Courthouse, 501 W. Hamilton St., Courtroom 1A, in Allentown, starting at 6 p.m. Wednesday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEHIGH CO., Pa. – Lehigh County commissioners are getting ready to consider a proposal for a wealth tax.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,20313,39502,18338,433,6192,18524,5302,96242,96241],"class_list":["post-221015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-budget-deficit","tag-county-commissioners","tag-investments","tag-lehigh-county","tag-mark-pinsley","tag-property-tax","tag-public-opposition","tag-tax-proposal","tag-wealth-tax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}