Following General Assembly approval of Governor McDonnell’s transportation plan and its accompanying tax changes, the Thomas Jefferson Institute released an updated version of the it’s paper Tax Restructuring in Virginia: A Revenue Neutral Path for Improving Our Economy containing new numbers based on the tax changes taking place on July 1, 2013. The paper argues for a strenuous tax reform effort and offers options that reduce and flatten the state income tax brackets, eliminate three job-killing taxes on businesses and broaden the sales tax to segments of the economy that have been exempt in the past.

Institute Chairman and President Mike Thompson testified April 2 on the issue before a joint meeting of the General Assembly’s Manufacturing Development Commission and the Small Business Commission, outlining the positive economic impact of its tax restructuring ideas and some of the key issues surrounding this idea.