“Cities and states brace for economic ‘reckoning,’ eyeing major cuts and fearing federal coronavirus aid isn’t enough,” by WaPo’s Tony Room: Many states and cities, which were already cash-strapped, are now in dire straits, facing plunging tax revenue and spiking costs. … “The result could be massive budget cuts along with layoffs or furloughs of city and state workers around the country, many local leaders fear. … The aid offered by Washington has been a mixed blessing, leaving some governors, mayors and analysts in recent days fearful that the money is too restrictive — and the Federal Reserve’s new program isn’t expansive enough — to spare the country from a dire economic crisis still to come.”
NOBODY’S COMING: States and localities normally get some $83 billion a year from travel and tourism, or around 6 percent of their total tax collections. But with the coronavirus causing a lockdown on vacationing, state and local governments — especially those most dependent on tourism, like Florida and Nevada — are starting to feel the pinch , Bloomberg Tax’s Sam McQuillan reported. The coronavirus hitting in spring, a strong season for tourism, was tough luck. But it’s also a reminder of just how many taxes there are tied to tourism and travel, be it levies on hotel beds, rental cars or even sports betting. Neither Florida nor Nevada have an income tax, and the states use revenue stemming from tourism on popular initiatives like education and infrastructure.
Georgia
Republicans in Georgia were hoping to keep slicing the state income tax , but it looks like the coronavirus might block that from happening. State House Speaker David Ralston said on Friday that neither the income tax cut (from 5.75 percent to 5.35 percent) scheduled for 2021 nor a pay hike for teachers was likely to become law, the Albany Herald reported — despite the fact that the legislature passed those measures in a fiscal 2021 budget just this month, before cutting their legislative session short. Ralston said state officials are trying to figure out what “we absolutely need to run the state” until the legislature comes back early next year, and that more tax cuts and higher pay for teachers “took up a lot of room in the budget that we, frankly, may not have now.”
New Jersey
New Jersey became the latest state to push its tax deadline back to July 15, syncing itself up with the federal filing calendar, as our Katherine Landergan reported. The Garden State was the last to decide what to do with its filing deadline, according to the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants.
But New Jersey also basically fell in with the crowd. Only three states with an individual income tax — Idaho, Mississippi and Virginia — didn’t push their filing deadlines back until at least July 15, as noted by Jared Walczak of the Tax Foundation. Virginia’s filing deadline is still just weeks away, on May 1, though any payments aren’t due until June 1. Mississippi’s deadline is May 15, and Idaho a month later, on June 15.
Virginia
Virginia isn’t following the federal government’s lead on delaying the tax filing season.
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