A wildly misleading school “tax cap” is on the ballot this November. Most of us in New Hampshire support property tax relief, even by using a tax cap, provided that our schools are adequately funded as constitutionally required (they are not, and have not been since the Claremont Decision in the 1990s). Further, separating the tax cap decision from the budget process undermines a critical form of local governance and makes it harder for districts to plan budgets. It also lacks any assurance that other revenue will supplement local deficits caused by such a cap, according to Reaching Higher NH.
In fact, local bodies already have the power to instate property tax caps: NH RSA 32:5-b and RSA 32:5-c are the statutes that allow local subdivisions and districts to adopt a local property tax cap. In Claremont, when a group organized a petition for a tax cap earlier this year, it lost in all three wards and fell far short of even a simple majority, 1,345 to 560, as reported by New Hampshire Public Radio. So why the opposition?
Its rejection in Claremont — a city already struggling with stable finances and leadership in the schools — highlights the delicate balance needed between property tax relief and maintaining a strong public school system. The voice of voters overwhelmingly rejected it. Discussion at the budget meeting showed that almost everyone was in agreement on the need to lower property taxes. What people could not agree with was cutting off their nose to spite their face. The tax cap failed because the community already saw what happens when you have to run a school with a huge deficit: Teachers are laid off, programs are cut and students leave in droves.
Why is it that we are not hearing from those who passed HB 1300 about the fact that local groups can already implement tax caps and how those votes went? This is because the state requires us to be ignorant and divided to achieve their own goals. And what are those goals? Constant tax decreases for big businesses and millionaires, all while people who have lived and worked here for decades carry a heavier burden of the property tax. Why must our schools suffer, instead of making folks in the top brackets pay their fair share, so that all of their workers are not priced out of their homes?
You cannot expect to build a thriving community without building a thriving education system. You cannot hand down state-mandated regulations without coughing over the funding needed to implement them. Because when you do, you force the already struggling property owner to pay for it. It is simply not a practical means to save money, nor encourage businesses to settle down here and instead creates a false partisan division.
Two big sources of revenue that could have acted as supplements, but were cut by New Hampshire leaders, were the interest and dividends tax (losing over $130 million), and the continued lowering of the BET and BPT tax rates. Between 2016 and 2024, this amounted to a total lost revenue between $795 million and $1.17 billion. This was done with the assumption that more businesses would come to our state. These past business tax cuts have failed to deliver on that promise of economic growth, according to the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, as reported by the Union Leader.
If you want lower property taxes, an obvious and already legal revenue stream would be to reimplement a higher rate for the BET and BPT taxes, which disproportionately benefit multi-state and multinational corporations. I will always regret watching a homeowner lose their house over high taxation more than I will regret watching a multinational corporation have their taxes raised by .05%. Last year alone, the lowering of the BET from .55 to .50 lost an estimated $105 million in forgone Business Enterprise Tax (BET) revenue during the fiscal year, according to the NH Bulletin.
Here is a thought experiment: Let’s say you are a business in NH, and your BET goes up .5%. Are you more, or less likely than a property owner whose rate has risen again, to leave the state? I would argue much less, almost every single time. A strong business should be able to work within such a minor raise, but when a homeowner sees “$17.10 on every $1,000 of assessed value,” it is a completely different story. They start making plans to sell their home, work overtime, or file for bankruptcy.
When Concord cuts taxes for big companies, it downshifts the burden to locals. Without additional revenue, districts will be forced to cut all non-essentials: sports, band, after-school programs, art programs, classes not required by the state, substitute teachers, field trips, etc. In addition to the extracurriculars, schools still need to transport students, maintain buildings, and compete in the market to hire qualified teachers. The responsibility is simply shifted onto local communities, where differences in wealth create dramatically different property tax rates and opportunities. Costs do not suddenly lower themselves if a tax cap is instituted.
If you are a “small government” conservative, a working-class independent, or a “big government” liberal, this should worry you (heavy on the air quotes). We are much closer to each other than we like to believe. Our grandparents losing their homes, our children losing out on sports, or our neighbors losing jobs at technical centers cannot be justified with false claims of tax relief.
If you support local control, you cannot support Concord downshifting costs, yet handing over mandates from above.
If you support the working class, you cannot expect them to make up the difference in funding after you cut taxes on the state’s largest earners.
If you support a strong democracy and public education, you cannot support Concord refusing to fund our schools without bankrupting locals.
We cannot keep subsidizing the rich in our state and assuming it will “trickle down” to the rest of us. But blaming others never helps us achieve a common goal. So what are we going to do about it?
We’re going to vote no on Nov. 3, work to reinstate fair taxes on New Hampshire’s largest profiteers, and organize neighbors to build a community meant to outlive the uncertainty of these times.
Loren Howard is a member of the Claremont School Board.