“Ice Ice Baby” was at the top of the charts in 1990, which was the last time Virginia updated its income tax brackets. That's when the top tax bracket was set at $17,000 a year.
Megan Davis at the Commonwealth Institute says Virginia’s tax code is upside down.
"People making the most in Virginia pay a lower tax rate as a percentage of their income than the people making the least, and it creates an incorrect shape to how you think that tax fairness should work. You should think that those with the ability to pay should pay more," Davis says. "And a new income tax bracket would help make a more fair tax code."
That's why she's supporting a bill that would create a new 10 percent tax bracket for people who have an income of more than million dollars a year.
"That's a very simplistic way of approaching it," says Shaun Kenney at the conservative Jefferson Forum. "When you're talking about somebody in Northern Virginia, maybe that's one answer. When you're talking about a farmer whose revenues are over a million dollars and their expenses are over a million dollars, and they barely break even every year, those are the people you're going to hurt."
Similar efforts to tax the rich have failed in the past, although this year it has a new twist: Money that comes from the proposed new millionaire's tax will be earmarked for schools, child care and affordable housing.
