{"id":298939,"date":"2010-02-09T17:09:16","date_gmt":"2010-02-09T22:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=76209"},"modified":"2010-02-09T17:09:16","modified_gmt":"2010-02-09T22:09:16","slug":"hawaii%e2%80%99s-2007-tax-cut-turned-into-a-600-percent-increase-in-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/298939","title":{"rendered":"Hawaii\u2019s 2007 Tax Cut Turned Into a 600 Percent Increase in 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2007, under the stewardship of Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, Hawaii <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2010\/02\/09\/news\/economy\/unemployment_taxes\/index.htm\" >reduced the unemployment tax rate<\/a> on employers under the guise of encouraging job growth &#8212; despite the fact that, at the time, Hawaii&#8217;s unemployment rate was 3.1 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Now that the unemployment rate is 6.9 percent, and people are applying for unemployment benefits at a record pace, Hawaii has a problem: a state law that triggers an automatic tax increase to cover shortfalls in the unemployment system. And whatever money Hawaii&#8217;s employers saved during the boom employment times, they&#8217;re about to have to repay in spades. The per-employee tax to fund unemployment benefits will go from $90 to $1,070 per worker this year &#8212; absent legislative intervention &#8212; to cover systemic shortfalls.<span id=\"more-76209\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Lingle is now calling for lawmakers to limit the per-employee tax increase to 60 percent, a $54-per-employee increase. Does anyone think that employers saved enough on the tax cut from 2007 to 2009 to make up for the current need for a massive increase?<\/p>\n<p>But don&#8217;t hold your breathe waiting for Republicans to start screaming about how massive tax reductions led to larger deficits in the end. These days, only spending can lead to deficits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2007, under the stewardship of Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, Hawaii reduced the unemployment tax rate on employers under the guise of encouraging job growth &#8212; despite the fact that, at the time, Hawaii&#8217;s unemployment rate was 3.1 percent. Now that the unemployment rate is 6.9 percent, and people are applying for unemployment benefits at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5454,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5454"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}