In the midst of a dismal budget season in which Gov. Jon S. Corzine and New Jersey lawmakers enacted dozens of new taxes we find that our own Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-Ewing, helped push through a particularly insidious taxing program.
The tax we’re talking about is a retroactive lottery winnings tax that hits up any Garden State lottery winners who won in 2009 for extra cash, even though it’s after the fact.
While The Ruins of Trenton does not support lotteries or gambling in particular, it seems that enacting a tax to hit up winners retroactively in order to shore up state finances that these legislators screwed up in the first place isn’t exactly fair.
The move will no doubt garner heavy scorn in the greater Trenton area where many people play the various state lotteries available to them. It’s no wonder then that Ms. Coleman and other Democratic lawmakers quietly sponsored this particular legislation and rammed it through with little fanfare.
The folks over at Blue Jersey labeled jilted winners who now face making a payment to the state “cry babies.”
That seems a little bit harsh considering that we’re talking about a state-run and sponsored lottery system in which players who win expect to collect their fair share of winnings, even after Uncle Sam takes a share that sometimes ranges over 25 percent of total winnings.
This looks like one budget gimmick aimed at bailing out New Jersey’s broken state government on the backs of its working, lottery-playing citizenry, courtesy of the greater Bonnie Watson-Coleman & Co.
2 Comments
July 3, 2009 at 10:44 am
As a matter of principle, having the state get a share of lottery winnings is probably fair. The ex post facto feature is, admittedly, a little sleazy.
However, one would expect that as a practical matter, one of the first things a lottery winner will spend his or her winnings on to be a good accountant who will find a way to reduce or eliminate that tax liability!
July 3, 2009 at 11:08 am
This is bad even by the pathetic standards of Watson-Coleman, who is undoubtedly on the nineteenth of her allotted fifteen minutes. However, it’s probably in her best interest to stay in public “service,” in case one of her kids winds up in the joint again, and she needs to call in a favor or two.
The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. Taking it one harsh step further, it’s a tax on stupidity. Who could be against that?