The Hillsdale City Council has proposed a city income tax, which will appear on the ballot in the upcoming election.
The new initiative applies to anyone working inside the city, regardless of residency. Because this is on the city ballot, only city residents are able to vote on the proposition.
City residents would pay 1 percent of their income, non-residents would only pay 0.5 percent. The proposal also states that anyone making a taxable income of $3,000 or less is exempt from paying city income taxes.
“Hillsdale is just very poor,” said Professor of English Christopher Busch. “The hospital and the college are the main places of employment, and both are non-profit. The factories have gone out of business, so we’ve lost a large source of revenue.”
The revenue from this tax would go only towards the repair of roads.
“Recently we’ve lost a lot of jobs with the factories going out of business. No one disputes the fact that we need to do something about the roads,” said City Councilperson Mary Wolfram.
This has been an issue for some time now, and now Hillsdale’s Council is taking bold steps to fix the problems, Wolfram said.
“The City Council has just decided enough is enough. They’ve decided they need to step up and take the heat,” she said.
As a Hillsdale student, if you make over $3,000 a year in the city, you are required to pay the city income tax as well.
