Posted on 02/01/2013 3:39:49 PM PST by rhema
Spend most of the year in St. Pete, pay the government in St. Paul.
You may have heard it can get cold in Minnesota in January, or for that matter in April. Last week the temperature dropped to seven below zero in the Twin Cities, which is one reason many Midwesterners head to Florida or Arizona for the winter. But now Governor Mark Dayton wants to tax the snowbirds even if they are no longer legally state residents.
"There is a snowbird tax—absolutely," the Democratic Governor told reporters the other day. . . .
Details are sketchy, but the idea is to tax these nonresidents on their income from stocks, bonds, capital gains and dividends if they spend at least 60 days in Minnesota a year. Income earned in the state is already taxed regardless of residence status, but many retirees or vacationers own a home in the state and live there only for the summer.
The new tax would hit income not earned in Minnesota by those who don't currently spend the requisite six months and a day in the state to qualify as a taxable resident. So, for example, if you returned to the land of 10,000 taxes only for July and August, you'd suddenly have to pay the taxman in St. Paul on dividend checks sent to your main residence in St. Pete.
[ . . . ]
But then as the Governor's line about "unfairnesses" attests, raising revenue isn't the point of this exercise. The goal is to punish people for the sin of being able to afford to travel south for the winter.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
marx dipwad ping
These people can just put their Minnesota house up for sale and live full time in a warmer state.
Need to tax the rascals moving from NY to Florida...just to be fair. These people were born to be taxed. Hit’m hard.
Sounds like a bit of “ethnic cleansing” of the productive.
Good friend of mine once lived in Minnesota, and he called attitudes like this one “the Minnesota stink.”
Check the stats and you find that the fastest growing states are the low tax states.Even in Communist New England,New Hampshire (no income tax...no sales tax) is growing by leaps and bounds while the rest of the region is going down in flames.
He’s going to be lonely all by himself when people there finally wake up and decide not to take this kind of abuse any more!
So instead of getting some tax revenue he will get nothing.
And then complain that it is not fair...
Those places are what the theatre/arts/sportswriters here crowd here call “backwards”.
They say without all the “investments” in stadiums, theatres and light rail, we’d be “a cold Omaha”.
Fargo is looking better all the time.
100% agree...I live part time in a waiting to die compound...NYers vote RAT, love obama and generally scum of the earth. Not all..but the majority.
The obviously wealthier tax base, who already have shown that they are unusually mobile are not the ones to target for taxes. Within a year, they will simply find another cold state to summer over in, like Alaska that PAYS you to live there.
Hard to run a welfare state with no tax base Gov...
But the obvious takes longer to discover for the obtuse.
If they all start moving south he’ll put a “relocation” tax on them.
They could live there for 59 days or less and not have to pay the new fine. What a fool the governor is! Does he really think people won't be able to figure out how to get around this?
As the blue states increasing fail financially, they jack up taxes and fees in a futile attempt to catch up.
Important electoral states like California, Illinois, and NY will undoubtedly get federal bailouts of some sort. But a state like Mn is SCREWED.
I heard on Rush today that DC has floated the idea of seizing 401k and IRA accounts and paying out a ‘dividend’ to the former owners.
There’s a word for that.
Several, actually.
Terry Mross ~:” If they all start moving south he’ll put a “relocation” tax on them.”
And when he does , I am sure that all the retirees will just roll over.. (NOT ! )
and not tell their children, and their childrens’ children ..
and it will bite him in the a$$ at the next election cycle !!
62% of growth in jobs is from 9 states with no income tax that have only 20% of the population .
At least, that’s what Laffer says.
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