To many Democrats, most disturbing about Mills’ no-new-taxes pledge is that it leaves in place LePage’s income-tax cuts, which lowered the top rate on the rich from 8.5 to 7.15 percent and swept away a 2016-referendum-approved 3-percent surtax on incomes over $200,000 that would have given more money to education. The left-leaning Maine Center for Economic Policy in Augusta estimates that the state is losing $864 million in revenue in the current budget cycle because of these cuts.
And Maine’s tax system now has the very, very wealthy — the 1 percent — paying in combined state and local taxes a lower share of family income than the bottom 20 percent of citizens, as the accompanying chart shows.
