Tax cut? Nah, we're ignoring the law.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/08/were-suing-to-save-michigans-tax-cut/
Michigan families and small businesses got unexpected good news this year: an income-tax cut. It happened automatically, thanks to a 2015 law. After several failed attempts to stop the cut from taking effect, state leaders have decided to ignore the law and raise taxes again at the end of this year. We’re suing to stop them.
Michigan law is clear. When the state’s revenue grows 42.5 percent faster than inflation, the income-tax rate gets cut — permanently. That happened in the last fiscal year, which is why the tax rate was cut by two tenths of a percentage point, to 4.05 percent. Yet in March, Attorney General Dana Nessel unilaterally declared that when lawmakers enacted the law eight years earlier, they “intended any income tax reduction . . . to be for that tax year only.” State Treasurer Rachael Eubanks subsequently declared that the tax cut would apply only in the 2023 fiscal year.
Based on the record-setting spending in the state budget passed in June, it is clear that the legislative majority plans to spend the extra tax dollars instead of returning them to hardworking Michiganders. If lawmakers want to reverse the tax cut, they have a perfectly legitimate way to do so: Pass a new law. The legislature and Governor Whitmer could easily introduce, debate, and enact a measure that either changes or repeals the 2015 law. That’s the legal way to stop a permanent tax cut. However, the governor and legislative majorities would rather ignore the law than take a tough vote.
