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Showing posts from September, 2021

Maine Pine Tree Zones, enacted to help low-income communities, grow the wealth divide

  The Pine Tree Zones will be considered for renewal at the end of 2021 but nobodies talking about it! Houcine Ncib Unsplash The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets. J ames Madison Federalist Paper #10 In 2004 the Pine Tree Zone tax exemptions were enacted in Maine as a program to benefit low-income high unemployed areas. In 2009 the Pine Tree Zone tax exemptions were amended to become state-wide tax exemptions for targeted areas, no longer restricted to low-income high unemployment areas. In 2017 the Pine Tree Zone was scheduled to sunset, but they were extended for another three years until December of 2021. At the end of this year, they will