By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The Christie administration has pursued a pro-growth agenda that includes tax incentives to companies to create private sector jobs, the state treasurer told a business audience at the Nassau Club Wednesday.
Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff used a breakfast speech before the Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce to highlight the accomplishments but also to stress the need for a state tax policy that recognizes the “serious” regional and national competition for jobs.
Since Gov. Christie took office in 2010, private sector employers created 89,700 jobs, he said. Mr. Sidamon-Eristoff said that last year was the best year for private sector growth in more than a decade, with 33,000 jobs added in the first half of this year.
Yet he was candid New Jersey has not fully recovered from the great recession in which the state lost 250,000 jobs. The state unemployment rate in June stood at 9.6 percent, an increase of four tenths of one percent compared to May, and is higher than the 8.2 percent rate national unemployment rate.
He said the administration has taken steps that include cutting back on some regulations; and $2.35 billion in “targeted” business tax cuts over the next five years.
As for state spending, he said the fiscal 2013 budget calls for no tax increase, nearly $200 million more in school funding and $347 million in business tax cuts. He defended the state’s revenue projections, of $31.7 billion, based on an anticipated rebound in the energy sector.
”Under this administration, we can point to three years of balanced budgets without any broad-based tax increase,” he said.
The Christie administration has been criticized after legislative budget officer David Rosen warned lawmakers that the governor’s revenue estimates would be off by $200 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30. Democrats in the Legislature have pounced on what they see as a failed “Jersey comeback” and vowed to hold off a tax cut the governor wants.
Although he did not spell out specific proposals, Mr. Sidamon-Eristoff said New Jersey needs to have a “competitive tax policy.”
”It’s incumbent on all of us to realize that we are facing very, very serious competition, regionally and nationally, for jobs and investment,” he said. “And having a competitive tax structure is material to that.”
He conceded that New Jersey would never be the lowest-taxed state in the country, yet he showed how neighboring states are more attractive, from the standpoint of their tax structures.
Data his office provided showed that among the six states from Connecticut to Maryland, New Jersey has the highest top rate for personal income tax at 8.97 percent, the second highest corporate tax rate at 9 percent and the second highest sales at 7 percent.
Mr. Sidamon-Eristoff also talked of the benefits that the state’s millionaires provide. New Jersey’s richest 1 percent account for about 38 percent of gross tax receipts, the state’s number one revenue source, he said.
”We are very, very, very reliant on our wealthiest taxpayers,” he said.
As of 2009, New Jersey has about 300 taxpayers reporting more than $10 million a year in income. To put that into context, he said it would take 420 taxpayers earning $100,000 annually to replace losing just one of those high earners.
He said the state wants “more millionaires here.”
”We need these people in order to fund the government that people want and expect here in New Jersey,” he said.
