Danbury Mayor Boughton: Repeal the state income tax

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton ratcheted up his effort to secure the 2018 Republican nomination for the Connecticut governorship by floating a proposed repeal of the state”™s income tax.

In an interview with the website Reclaim Connecticut, Boughton defined the creation of the state income tax in 1991 as the beginning of the end of Connecticut”™s economic prosperity.
“The only time that the state of Connecticut was excelling at economic development was when we didn”™t have an income tax,” he said. “If we”™re going to think out of the box, then we ought to start at eliminating the income tax.”

Only seven states do not have their own income tax, with Florida being the sole East Coast state providing residents with that option. However, Boughton was vague about what would replace the income tax as a revenue source.
“We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” he said, adding the elimination of the tax will bring new investment back to the state. “We”™ve talked about bringing wealth back to Connecticut, economic investment back to Connecticut. Many times, when you cut taxes you actually increase revenue.”

Boughton is not the only Republican gubernatorial hopeful to propose a rewriting of the Connecticut tax code. In an interview to be published later this week in the Fairfield County Business Journal, Shelton Mayor Mark A. Lauretti said that his first order of business if he was elected governor would be the repeal of the estate tax, declaring that “it has become a big deterrent and pushed wealth out of our state, and we get very little in return.”