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”

  3. “‘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”Hoffer says that he never sent out a press release about this, that it was a “blog entry.” Which means one of two things: either he’s lying and he did send out a press release, or he just sent this to 7D, considering this a blog on which he can write entries.

  4. Does the fact that I bust my ass working all the time and feel that I am crushed by taxes in Vermont between the income, property, and sales taxes, make me, too, a “liar” and “stupid,” Mr. Hoffer, just like Dubie? Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Hoffer, for dismissing me and thousands of other Vermonters like me for the ignorant fleas that we are. I’m so glad that your determined belief that Vermonters are undertaxed doesn’t give a sh** about my foolish working-taxpayer perception.

  5. From the Rutland Herald…”‘It’s very clear: Vermont does not have a crushing tax burden — period — and anyone who says it does is lying,’ said Doug Hoffer… Hoffer said he can’t provide any data proving he’s right. But neither, he said, can Dubie.’He’s made a statement with a very important assumption underneath it, and the question is has Dubie provided information that will support that assumption, Hoffer said. ‘If he has not, then one leg of his stupid stool is gone.'”OK, so a candidate for Auditor is now spending most of his time attacking a candidate for Governor, calling him (and the editor of Forbes magazine) a “liar” and at least one his ideas “stupid,” while admitting that he can’t support his assertions.Awesome.

  6. Mr. Farrell:”if Brian Dubie and Jim Douglas couldn’t lighten our load over the past eight years, why should we promote Dubie?”That comment doesn’t reflect much thought. Now why exactly do you think Douglas and Dubie might not have made much progress in lightening our load over the years? Could it be that, oh, maybe, they were blocked by the anti-business, pro-tax legislature? You can’t prevent someone from doing what they want to do, and them blame them for not accomplishing it. That’s ridiculous.And, by the way, you can’t blame a Lt. Gov., who has no power in Vt., for not reducing the tax burden.

  8. Haik:”Sometimes the pseudonym is the message, Jimmy.”You were responding to something I said to Jason but, ummm, congratulations on your ongoing efforts toward efficient astroturfing detection algorithms, I guess.Jason:”I found me one of them quotes you couldn’t find on the ‘google'”If you’d slow down and read what I wrote, I said that I couldn’t find YOUR quote. When you quote something, it implies that the person you’re quoting said exactly that. I can obviously find stuff about Dubie and tax burden, it’s right on his site. For the third time, I have no interest in debating Dubie vs. whomever or whether his larger point about taxes is accurate. I was pointing out that an attempt to debate it using half-finished, five year old data is ill-advised, especially when you’re applying for a job where you have to be rigorous and accurate.As an aside, without getting into why, it fills me with mirth when a “Vermont internet expert” speaks patronizingly to me wrt how the internet works, so feel free to keep it up. Maybe you can use the phrase “series of tubes” or something, I think that one still gets laughs around here.”Your protests about Doug… are faulty and weak.”Don’t bother telling me why, or responding to any of the other points I actually made, though. That might actually require a bit of thought, and who wants to bother with that?

  9. “…a commenter’s identity only matters when you’re getting frustrated…” Sometimes the pseudonym is the message, Jimmy. “Dubie means layoffs” is a better name, because it does not describe the author as anything other than anti-Dubie, whereas the name “Obama supporter for Dubie” in itself creates an impression of support for Dubie within a certain demographic. Now is it possible some Obama supporters will vote for Dubie? Of course. But it is also quite possible that someone who would never support Obama would use this pseudonym to create an impression of support for Dubie among Democrats that is purely artificial. That is known as “astro-turfing” defined in a nustshell as the faking of grass-roots support. It’s an entirely dishonest political tactic. See my post on it from the 2006 senate race.And it’s just my opinion, but I belive a comment has much more credibility when you know who wrote it. The most effective speeches and writing establish the presenter’s credentials on a topic sbefore the argument is even presented. That can’t happen anonymously. Hiding your identity will always handicap your credibility, as I see it.

  10. “Jimmy” – I found me one of them quotes you couldn’t find on the “google” which led me directly to Lt. Gov. Dubie’s website.http://briandubie.com/issues “A crushing tax burden makes it hard for Vermont to compete for jobs with other states, let alone China, India and other rising economic powers. Regardless of what survey you go by, Vermont consistently ranks as one of the most heavily taxed states in the nation, from property taxes to income taxes, and all the fees and other taxes in between.”and this gem:”Vermont’s tax burden is like an eighty-pound backpack.”Beside the fact that Brian continues to bash Vermont, an obvious question might be, if Brian Dubie and Jim Douglas couldn’t lighten our load over the past eight years, why should we promote Dubie? It seems to me that all this crowing about merit based analysis of job performance ought to apply to the Governor’s race as well as our teachers. Your protests about Doug, a statewide candidate, pointing out the misstatements of Brian Dubie, another statewide candidate, are faulty and weak.

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