For someone who’s never thrown his hat into the ring before now, Doug Hoffer, the Democratic nominee for state auditor, has come out swinging like a seasoned pro against… Brian Dubie?

 

That’s right. Hoffer hasn’t been elected auditor yet, but he’s already fact-checking the GOP gubernatorial candidate’s numbers and challenging his claim that Vermont’s income tax rate is higher than Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Hoffer called Dubie’s statement “terribly misleading”  and incorrect.

“It is disingenuous to talk about Vermont’s ‘income tax’ for the simple reason that Vermont does not have one income tax,” Hoffer wrote, in a press statement. “It has a progressive tax system so residents pay at very different rates depending on their income. I am certain Mr. Dubie knows this so it makes me wonder why he would use such language.”

Hoffer suggests that Mr. Dubie was referring to the “top marginal rate” which, he says, applies to less than 1 percent of all tax filers. Moreover, he says, because of differences between state tax systems, “the actual taxes paid by residents of different states is not at all what Mr. Dubie would have us believe.”

Hoffer offers the following numbers, which were put together by the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office in 2007:

 

 

Single homeowner  > 65

Single renter

Married homeowner   (2 kids)

Married homeowner   (2 kids)

Married homeowner   (3 kids)

Married homeowner   (2 kids)

Income

$19,429

$24,500

$80,743

$109,320

$357,934

$1,066,309

State
Maine

$385

$833

$3,004

$5,217

$23,417

$79,591
Massachusetts

$855

$852

$3,073

$5,261

$18,030

$56,023
Vermont

$358

$589

$1,406

$3,494

$20,872

$72,760
Source: Tax Study Vol. 2, Joint Fiscal Office 2007

“The discourse on economic development and tax policy are too important to be based on misinformation,” Hoffer concludes. “Sadly, that has been the case for much of the last eight years. It’s unfortunate that Mr. Dubie is picking up where Jim Douglas left off.  We deserve better.”

This article appears in Sep 1-7, 2010.

Staff Writer Ken Picard is a senior staff writer at Seven Days. A Long Island, N.Y., native who moved to Vermont from Missoula, Mont., he was hired in 2002 as Seven Days’ first staff writer, to help create a news department. Ken has since won numerous regional and national awards for his features, profiles and investigative stories and had his work picked up by international news outlets. He was the first journalist to shine a light on the thousands of undocumented workers in Vermont’s dairy...

34 replies on “Auditor Candidate Hoffer Calls Out Brian Dubie’s Tax Claims”

  2. Fact check (no mysteries)Mr. Dubie specifically referred to income taxes. The figures presented are only for income taxes and, therefore, respond directly to Mr. Dubie’s statement.As for the numbers, they come from Vol. 2 of the JFO Tax Study )pp. 4 – 12). This is clearly stated underneath the table. JFO hired a CPA who filled out tax forms for the two dozen representative families in twelve different states (including Maine & Mass.).Finally, Maine does not have a 6.5% flat tax on income; it has a progressive tax system ranging from 2% to 8.5%.See the Maine Revenue Dept. athttp://www.maine.gov/revenue/forms/1040/2009/RateSched09.pdfor the Federation of Tax Administrators at http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/ind_inc.pdf

  3. Keep calling names Jimmy. At the end of the day I prefer to have a Governor doesn't blatantly misrepresent Vermont's tax structure to suit his own ideologically driven tax breaks for millionaires when the state faces a $150 million revenue crisis.

  4. They don’t include Property tax because Doobie’s statement didn’t include property tax.He’s “challenging his (Dubie’s) claim that Vermont’s income tax rate is higher than Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.”Doobie says VT is the highest taxed, but that is generally only true for the top 1% of earners. Doobie obviously thinks those are the only people who count. That’s fine, let’s just be honest about it.

  5. The numbers don’t include property taxes, which are higher in Vermont than in Maine on average. Other than that, I have no idea how he calculated them. It’s quite a mystery, since Maine has a 6.5% flat tax on income, and Vermont’s top tax rate is 8.95%.Hoffer uses numbers from the JFO study. When pressed about why it didn’t include property taxes, he’s offered various reasons, but ultimately stated that they ran out of money. Great source material.

  6. The numbers aren’t petulant. Vermont’s tax of $20,872 is less than Maine’s $23,417 for the highest earner on this chart. Jimmy doesn’t like Hoffer’s message, so he’s calling him names. Let’s see your numbers, Jimmy, if there’s an honest, adult argument to make.

  8. Hoffer is letting his raging class envy trip him up. Of course the tax system is progressive, most tax systems are. That doesn’t mean you can’t refer to “vermont’s income taxes” or “Vermont’s tax burden.” The reality is that Hoffer seems to hate financially successful people so much that he has unilaterally decided that they don’t matter. He’s been belching variations of this argument out to anyone who would listen on blogs for years, and apparently he’s not going to let its irrelevance to his or the Governor’s campaigns from deterring him now that a handful of people are listening.The Auditor needs to be able to work with the Governor and other top officials. Blasting out petulant nonsense like this doesn’t inspire confidence that he has it in him to do that.He sure is lucky to have 7 Days campaigning for him by posting this stuff without comment, though.

  9. Maybe this is why Dubie's campaign staff allowed media only 12 minutes to ask questions about his 25-page plan. "Jobs, jobs, jobs" indeed. Dubie/Douglas were laying off hundreds of state employees and slashing education and mental health spending as unemployment was spiking from 2.8 percent in January 2001 — before a Republican took over to 7.3 percent by 2009. Vermont deserves better than this tired failed trickle down nonsense.
    Nice work Hoffer! Can't wait to have you as auditor.

  10. I love this guy for state auditor! You should love to do this sort of stuff (crunch numbers to produce this sort of thing) if you want to be auditor, and he clearly does. Go Hoffer!

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