Community Corner

Connecticut Comptroller Creates Online Tax Calculator

You can zap any state tax, credit or tax exemption you don't like in Comptroller Kevin Lembo's new online revenue tool.

This article was written and reported by Associate Regional Editor Eileen McNamara. It was posted by Jason Vallee.

Connecticut’s top tax man is giving us all a crack at his job.

Comptroller Kevin Lembo has launched an interactive website where residents can tinker with the state’s tax rates and experiment, albeit in a non-binding manner, with Connecticut’s revenue streams.

Lembo’s “Do-it-Yourself State Revenue Impact Calculator,” on the comptroller’s website, Open Connecticut, lets users change personal income tax rates, the state’s luxury tax rate and the gas tax, to name a few.

The online tool also lets users eliminate any number of other revenue options, such as corporate tax credits or personal tax exemptions, to see the impact those decisions would have on state revenues.

Think the state’s sales tax is too high? Let’s change it from 6.35 to 5 percent. Uh, oh. We just put Connecticut’s revenue stream $300 million in the hole.

No worries! Let's just change the luxury tax from 7 to 11 percent and double the state’s corporate business tax to 15 percent. While we’re at it, let’s get rid of that “certain utilities” sales tax exemption of $224 million (what the heck is that anyway?)

Those changes just erased the $300 million deficit and put Connecticut’s revenue picture $103 million in the black.

Lembo said his online calculator is intended to give taxpayers a broad idea of how state revenue streams work and how changes in them can impact Connecticut’s overall revenue picture. It is not, he said, an effort to win public opinion around any type of tax policy.

"It's consistent with the work I've been doing around trying to produce greater transparency around the state's finances," Lembo told the Connecticut Mirror. "This is a piece, obviously, of that larger transparency effort."

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