Given her ubiquity and worldwide fame, you’d think that any association with pop czarina Taylor Swift would generally be a popular or well-received one.
(Disgruntled NFL fans notwithstanding.)
Democrat-run Rhode Island is learning — in real-time — that that’s simply not the case.
Especially when Swift’s name is being unofficially plastered on a deeply unpopular tax increase that would hit homeowners who are not year-round occupants of their Rhode Island home.
“This Taylor Swift Tax is not a ‘tax the rich’ tax even though it sounds like it,” President of the Rhode Island Association of Realtors Chris Whitten told WJAR. “It’s a yearly tax on someone that owns a home whose assessed value is over a million dollars.”
Obviously, this tax is not taking direct aim at Swift (though, WJAR noted that Swift would have to cough up an additional $136,000 per year for her Rhode Island property under this new tax).
Even homeowners who don’t have Rhode Island properties are leery of other counties adopting a similar “Swift Tax.”
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy admitted he has no Rhode Island homes to Fox Business, but he saw the potential ramifications.
Is this tax proposal a bad idea?
“Now, I don’t have any houses in Rhode Island, but I got some pretty close to Rhode Island,” Portnoy explained. “So, I don’t like those states getting the ideas.”
Concerns from sports moguls and the Rhode Island Association of Realtors largely appears to be falling on deaf ears.
State Speaker of the House Joe Shekarchi, a Democrat, made clear that tough — and potentially unpopular — budgetary decisions would be unavoidable.
“In order to address Rhode Island’s crisis in health care, we needed to make tough decisions and find additional revenues in the budget to invest in primary care and Medicaid,” Shekarchi told WJAR. “I felt it was more equitable to increase the costs on second homes worth over a million dollars than increasing the tax burden on working Rhode Island families.”
Whitten’s not buying that line of thinking.
“Please, don’t take from our housing market at the moment to balance the budget for other items. It’s going to be detrimental,” he said.
Beyond the “Taylor Swift Tax,” Rhode Island realtors are also sounding the alarm on a flat 63 percent increase in the conveyance tax for home sellers.
Whitten explained how, under the current conveyance tax, a $500,000 home would accrue about $2,400 in taxes.
The conveyance tax increase would bump up that $2,400 figure by about $1,500.
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