Take action TODAY! Tell your legislator to fund our schools instead of passing tax cuts that benefit the wealthy!
For weeks, Republican leaders in Harrisburg have been telling us that we can’t afford to enact the Basic Education Commission’s seven-year plan to fully and fairly fund our schools—the plan that is meant to meet the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court judgment that the current system of school funding is unconstitutional.
Republicans claimed that we could not use the state’s $14 billion surplus to give every kid in Pennsylvania a great education.
Yet last week, Republican Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman proposed a reduction in the Personal Income Tax rate and the elimination of the Gross Receipt Tax on electricity. These tax cuts would eventually cost the state $2.7 billion per year—and between now and 2028, they would drain most of the $14 billion surplus needed for our schools.
What’s worse: most of the benefit of the Personal Income Tax cut would go to the richest Pennsylvanians. Taxes for the top 1% of taxpayers, with an average income of $1.9 million, would be reduced by $5,435 per year. Taxes for the middle 20% of families, with an average income of $67,100, would be reduced by only $181. Families in the bottom 20% would only receive a tax cut of $20 per year.
Use this tool to tell your state senators and representatives you oppose this plan.
Tell them:
- Now is the time to fund our schools and other critical priorities such as affordable housing.
- Now is not the time to give the richest Pennsylvanians a tax cut when our tax system already taxes the working people and middle-class people of our state more heavily than the rich.
And tell the Republican-controlled senate, which has no meetings scheduled for a month, to come back to work and do right by ALL our kids.
You can read more about this proposal in this statement, which also suggests alternatives to the tax cut that are more progressive and raise more money from the richest Pennsylvanians to fund our schools.
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