Shelley Geballe, JD, MPH and Joachim Hero, MPH

Connecticut's state revenue shortfall has been a direct result of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. The deficit mitigation plans for Fiscal Year 2010 proposed by Governor Rell and Republicans in the General Assembly would seek to close a projected budget deficit by relying entirely on spending cuts, without consideration for the growing need for services, fairness, or the state's economic future.

This brief outlines several more balanced alternatives that would reduce reliance on damaging cuts, including delaying or canceling reductions in the gift and estate tax, evaluating and reducing tax expenditures, making the state income tax more progressive, increasing and offsetting the sales tax, closing corporate tax loopholes through combined reporting, restructuring corporate taxes, raising "sin" taxes, and restoring the petroleum gross earnings tax rate. (January 2010)

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