Families and businesses in North Carolina continued to see promising gains from the 2018 state legislative session as lawmakers remained committed to higher salaries for educators and state employees, increased investments in public schools and a successful pro-growth jobs agenda. The accomplishments mark another year of promises kept by the Republican-led General Assembly to deliver […]
North Carolina House and Senate leaders announced their agreement last night on adjustments to the current two-year state budget. As a result of Republicans’ pro-growth economic policies, North Carolina has its fourth consecutive revenue surplus this year, enabling lawmakers to make targeted adjustments to the biennial budget passed last year in order to address critical […]
Since 2010, when voters put Republicans in charge of most state governments across the United States, North Carolina became one of about a half-dozen states where conservative reformers have frequently — and sometimes spectacularly — faced off with progressives in ways that have attracted significant national attention. In 2011, the new GOP-majority General Assembly defeated […]
Employment figures released earlier this week by the state Department of Commerce show that the number of people employed in North Carolina increased by a total of 85,879 throughout 2017, while the number of people unemployed decreased by 20,263 over the same year-long period. The employment growth data follows a positive revenue outlook released by the […]
Fraud prevention laws recently enacted by the North Carolina General Assembly are guarding against identity theft and protecting millions in state revenue from scammers this tax season. The state Department of Revenue (DOR) attributed an 18% uptick in cases of identified fraud and a 20% uptick in savings for the 2016-2017 Fiscal Year to the […]
Hundreds of thousands of hardworking North Carolinians will no longer pay any state income tax by 2019, thanks to several rounds of tax relief provided by the legislature’s Republican majority. A recent memo from the head economist at the non-partisan Fiscal Research Division notes that “of the nearly 4 million tax returns anticipated for tax […]
Planning your summer vacation and looking for some light beach reading? Joseph Coletti over at the John Locke Foundation has you covered with a comprehensive analysis of this year’s state budget: A New State Budget Based On Time-Tested Principles In his 1985 address to the North Carolina Foundation for Research and Economic Education (NC FREE), […]
Lawmakers in Raleigh passed bipartisan legislation at the end of June giving more authority to cities and counties to relax certain prohibitions on the sale of alcohol. Senate Bill 155, the culmination of months of work, is catch-all legislation reforming more than a dozen alcoholic beverage control (ABC) laws. The final bill combined three different pieces of legislation, including House Bill 500, focusing on craft breweries, […]
Legislation passed the House overwhelmingly last month that will help stimulate commerce and job creation for coin dealers and those in the Precious Metals trade. House Bill 434 updates current sales tax laws to allow for the exemption from sales taxes for the commercial sales of gold and silver bullion and coins. Included in the exemption is the […]
50 million tourists spent $23 billion in North Carolina last year, an all-time high, according to a new report by the U.S. Travel Association. These tourism dollars supported 45,000 small businesses, 218,340 jobs, and generated $3.6 billion in taxes. And much of that spending was undoubtedly linked to outdoor recreation; figures also released today by the Outdoor Industry Association show that in 2016, outdoor […]