Tax Amnesty Program Yields $600M. Corzine Pledges To Restore $400M In Property Tax Rebates

Today's scheduled votes on the State Budget in the Assembly and Senate were postponed as Governor Corzine announced that the tax amnesty program that expired on Monday June 15 yielded $400 million more than expected, "with thousands of envelopes yet to be counted."

Given the new found revenue, Corzine, Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts and Senate President Richard Codey agreed to send the budget back to their respective legislative committees on Monday June 22, with final passage of a revised budget expected on Thursday June 25.

Urging the Legislature to put $400 million in new-found revenue toward property tax relief for middle-class homeowners, Governor Corzine said:

"I want to convey in the strongest possible terms, my commitment to using these recovered resources to provide middle class homeowners with much needed property tax relief.

Let me be clear. When revenues fell, the last item we cut was property tax relief. Now that we’ve recovered some lost revenues the first thing we will restore is property tax relief.

Further, we must not and we will not return to past practices. Today is June 18th not December 25th – we will not be buying a Christmas tree. The money belongs to the taxpayers and we are going to give it back to them in property tax relief.

To any special interest groups that might want to line up, let me also be clear: I will do everything in my power to make certain that recovered funds are directed to property tax relief."

GOP Gubernatorial nominee Chris Christie wasn't impressed. He said,

"It is now clear that Jon Corzine has no control over the budget or our government. He promised four years ago to change the way Trenton budgeted, but this budget uses billions in one-shot gimmicks, including this latest tax amnesty windfall, that will have to be made up in future budgets. This kind of haphazard governing by chance just doesn't cut it when we're facing 8.8 percent unemployment, skyrocketing property taxes and real pain for all middle class New Jerseyans."

Senate Republican Budget Officer Anthony R. Bucco (R-Morris) challenged Corzine to provide an update on all revenues in light of the one-time revenues derived from the tax amnesty program. Bucco said,

“We now know that thousands of people and businesses fell behind in their tax payments as a tidal wave of tax increases washed over them for the past 8 years. Substantial revenue is coming in from people and businesses responding to threats of punishment unless they pay up. But, we don’t know whether revenue from all the other taxes are continuing to deteriorate as they have since September of last year.”

“Before Corzine and the Democrats rush to increase spending the public’s money, we need to know if collections in income taxes, sales taxes, and corporate taxes continue to plunge, offsetting this gain.”

In recent months income, sales, and corporate business tax collections have been plunging at an accelerated rate. Even though double digit declines in these taxes continue to grow, the budget bill as introduced is premised on the assumption that revenue collections from these taxes will be exactly as predicted in mid May.