(The Center Square) – Fiscal responsibility through keeping taxes and spending low has been a boon to the New Hampshire state budget, a policy group says.
The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, said that as New Hampshire gears up for an election where a new governor will be chosen, the state has more than half-a-billion dollars surplus at the end of the fiscal year.
New Hampshire ended fiscal year 2023 with a $538.9 million surplus in the general fund and Education Trust Fund, the group said in a blog post.
“Large budget surpluses have [been] so commonplace, though, that they barely prompt a blurb anymore,” Bartlett President Andrew Cline wrote in a blog post. “When revenues exceed budgeted expenses by more than half a billion dollars, that’s notable. And this is after multiple rounds of business tax cuts that critics said would devastate the state budget and leave New Hampshire with too little revenue to fund basic services.”
The policy group pointed to a surge in business tax receipts as one of the Granite State’s “most important economic (and political) stories” spanning the past 10 years.
According to Bartlett, New Hampshire drew in $323.2 million, which was 33.7% over the plan, for fiscal year 2022, and stood at 5.6% above fiscal year 2021 at $68 million.
Growth spanning the past decade in New Hampshire, the policy group said, has increased from $2.16 billion in fiscal year 2012 and reached $3.23 billion in fiscal year 2022 in both the general and education trust funds.
However, Bartlett says inflation accounted for $663 million of the $1.068 billion revenue increase, using the Consumer Price Index in its tabulations. It said that $404 million was “new money.”
Record low unemployment at 1.8% was another factor in the state’s arsenal, Bartlett said, with the state’s economy “churning out jobs and revenue.” Business tax cuts dating back to 2015 was helped the state’s fiscal successes and phasing out the Interest & Dividends Tax by 2025 will only add to the ledger.
New Hampshire has gained success, Bartlett says, is benefiting from other states with higher tax rates. To that point, Massachusetts and its 9% income tax on million-dollar earners has forced some residents to relocate, as previously reported by The Center Square.
