Inside West Virginia Politics

In Segment 1, we take a look at West Virginia Governor Jim Justice’s latest town hall meeting on the state income tax.The governor’s goal for these virtual town halls is to discuss his proposal to eventually phase out or eliminate the state income tax. He says with the state’s current strong economics, now is the time to move forward with removing the tax. While some taxes may raise slightly to offset the state income tax removal, Justice says his goal is for West Virginians’ net tax burden to go down.In Segment 2, the discussion on the state income tax continues with Delegate Jim Barach (D-Kanawha). Barach says he is concerned about the proposal to eliminate West Virginia’s state income tax, calling it “a return to supply-side economics.”Barach says the proposal to backfill the lost revenue from the income tax by raising the state sales tax, among other taxes, because the sales tax is a “regressive tax” and those “on the lower end of the economic spectrum pay a higher amount of their money in the sales tax.”