Senator Guglielmo Votes Against Property Tax Shift Bill

Calling it anti-business and anti-jobs, State Senator Tony Guglielmo, R-Stafford, yesterday voted against a proposal that would significantly raise the property tax burden on Connecticut’s business community. According to Sen. Guglielmo, the legislation allows cities and towns across the state to increase property tax rates on businesses up to 40%. The bill, which set out to reduce property taxes of homeowners shifts the burden to commercial property, multifamily housing units and rental property.

“This is a bad bill,” said Sen. Guglielmo. “The object here should be to help our municipalities. I cannot see how we are helping any municipality by increasing the taxes on businesses, especially when we are talking about a 40% increase in some instances. Moving the tax burden from one entity to another does nothing to address the problem that taxes are too high. I have long opposed tax credits to certain businesses and conversely I oppose unfair tax debts on certain businesses.”

The legislation calls for a delay in the next revaluation date for certain municipalities and allows any municipality to reduce property taxes at the expense local businesses that would be hit with a surcharge of up to 40%. The bill also requires the state to divert more PILOT funds to qualifying cities. Since there is no increase to the amount of PILOT funding provided under the bill, the pool of PILOT funds would be diminished, thus taking funding from one municipality to pay another.

“What’s troubling here is that if high property taxes are making people move out of certain cities and towns then why in the world would we create a similar burden on businesses?” said Sen. Guglielmo. ” It makes no sense. We need to create a system that allows businesses to grow and create jobs so people will have the capital to reinvest in our communities. This bill is counterproductive to a very large degree.”