This November, the voters of North Dakota will have several divergent ballot measures to weigh in on. One such measure is a brazen attempt to socially engineer behavior with the state’s tax code. Newspaper editorial boards such as the Fargo Forum and Grand Forks Herald have already decided this tax increase is the way to go,…
North Dakota Democrats Think You’re Not Paying Enough in Taxes
The drift of North Dakota’s Democrats into political irrelevance often gets blamed on how far left their national party has gone. It’s hard to win elections in North Dakota when your fellow Democrats nationally are advancing (as one example) a federal regulatory regime which would be devastating for North Dakota’s primary industries. But there is…
John Andrist: Understanding What We Pay Taxes For
It’s a rare person who loves to pay taxes. But understanding the systems seems to help mollify me. Take real estate or property taxes, for instance. That’s the one we seem to hate the most. Partly, I think, most of us pay it in one chunk, unlike income taxes and sales taxes. So it can…
Ballot Measure To Raise North Dakota’s Tobacco Taxes By Nearly 400 Percent Reportedly In The Works
UPDATE: From the comments: “Strange that we may have a ballot measure to legalize marijuana and at the same time a ballot measure to attempt to tax the tobacco industry out of business in this state.” North Dakota has some of the lowest tobacco tax rates in the nation. According to the Campaign for Tobacco…
North Dakota Newspaper Editor: Obama Going For “Killing Blow” Against The Oil Industry
This video commentary by Dickinson Press editor Dustin Monke is pretty great. In it he addresses President Barack Obama’s proposed $10 per-barrel tax on oil production (which, as I’ve pointed out previously, would amount to about a $4.2 billion tax on North Dakota based on current production levels), something he calls an attempted “killing blow”…
Audio: Burgum Sides With Democrats On Oil Tax Reform
UPDATE: Burgum has clarified his comments on the oil extraction tax. He says he supports the lower rate and would have signed the bill creating it into law had he been governor in 2015. Also, I mistakenly attributed comments about the lower rate being a give away to Burgum in the post below. Those weren’t…
North Dakota Ranked 33rd For Tax Burdens
The Tax Foundation has released their annual state-by-state measure of tax burdens, and North Dakota comes in at number 33. As the map above shows, our state did significantly better than Minnesota which had the 8th highest tax burden in the nation. Montana performed slightly better, though, coming it at 38 and South Dakota came…
North Dakota High School Assignment: Tell Lawmakers To Raise Taxes
Should schools teach our kids what to think? Or how to think? Over at Watchdog today I write about an assignment at Sheyenne High School in West Fargo which made students write to state lawmakers urging them to raise tobacco taxes. The assignment was born of an American Lung Association presentation at a teacher conference…
Ugly: North Dakota General Fund Revenues Under Forecast By Almost 4 Percent
The image above is the most recent revenue report for North Dakota’s general fund. A lawmaker sent me a photo of it (OMB hasn’t posted it on their website yet) this morning with a one-word comment. “Ugly.” No kidding. Especially in the area of the sales tax, which makes up the bulk of general fund…
Does Minnesota Have A Better Business Climate Than North Dakota? I’m Not Buying It
In a recent ranking by CNBC, Minnesota comes in #1 in the nation in terms of business climate. North Dakota ranked 6th, South Dakota ranked 11th, Iowa ranked 10th, and Wisconsin ranked 15th. That’s an unusual outcome, and one likely to prompt a lot of gloating east of the Red River where government officials have…
