CT Advocates Push Billionaire's Tax on Tax Day

About a dozen people dressed as Mr. Monopoly showed up at Gov. Ned Lamont’s office Wednesday, and they brought receipts. More than 1,500 postcards from Connecticut residents, to be exact, all demanding what advocates are calling a billionaires’ tax.

The Tax Day demonstration at the State Capitol drew working-class advocates alongside the top-hat-wearing protesters, who chanted on the front lawn: “Fund Connecticut. Tax the Rich.” It was theatrical. It was also pointed.

“We have working families saying we are doing what we can with what we have. We can’t take it anymore,” said Norma Martinez-HoSang, director of Connecticut For All, a statewide coalition of social justice advocacy groups that helped organize the event.

Small Businesses Feeling the Squeeze

Lauren Anderson runs Possible Futures, a community book space in New Haven. She came to the Capitol to say something Connecticut lawmakers don’t always want to hear: that the gap between their enthusiasm for ribbon-cuttings and their actual policy choices is costing small businesses real money.

“If everyone paid their fair share, including the biggest corporations and the wealthiest individuals in Connecticut,” Anderson said, “we could invest in a foundation that small businesses depend on: healthy workers, strong communities, and customers who can afford to spend.”

That’s the core argument here. Not just fairness in the abstract, but the practical claim that tax policy shapes whether a small shop in New Haven has customers with money in their pockets.

Alicia Hernandez Strong, a fourth grade teacher in the New Britain Public Schools district, made the stakes concrete. She said a billionaires’ tax would protect state services and school programming that are currently on the chopping block.

“If we do tax the wealthy, then we’ll be able to guarantee great schools for every child,” Strong said, “not just the children and the families who can afford to live in these wealthier towns.”

That last line cuts to something real in Connecticut. The school funding gap between wealthy towns like Greenwich and lower-income cities like New Britain is one of the most persistent divides in state politics, and it’s not getting smaller.

Where the Legislature Stands

Rep. Jason Doucette, a Manchester Democrat who chairs the tax equity caucus, tied the state debate directly to what’s happening in Washington. Federal cuts to SNAP and other public benefits, he said, are compounding what he called Connecticut’s existing “tax inequity problem.”

“How are we going to fund SNAP and public benefits, which have been slashed down in Washington?” Doucette said. “We’re facing a real crisis, and it’s only getting worse.”

Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney of New Haven and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff of Norwalk put out a joint statement Wednesday framing the moment as a contrast with federal policy. “This is the most expensive Tax Day in recent memory. The only people catching a break are the wealthy and well-connected,” they said. Democrats in Hartford, they argued, are doing the opposite, pointing to proposed cuts to the sales tax on groceries, clothing, and everyday essentials.

Not everyone agrees on the diagnosis. Connecticut Republican Chairman Ben Proto argued that Lamont and Democrats are missing the real problem entirely. Property taxes, he said, are the most regressive piece of the state’s tax structure. “It is the most regressive tax that we have. It’s the only tax where, when you get the bill, you have to pay it,” Proto said.

He’s not wrong that property taxes hit hardest in communities where home values are lower relative to residents’ incomes. That’s a different argument than the one advocates were making Wednesday, but it points to the same underlying tension: Connecticut’s tax system loads up working and middle-class families while leaving significant wealth largely untouched.

Americans for Tax Fairness, which released a report Wednesday, found that Connecticut’s billionaires have seen 34% wealth growth over the past 16 months. The data is the organization’s own.

Reporting by CT Mirror captured the breadth of Wednesday’s event, including the range of voices from educators to small business owners who made the trip to Hartford.

The General Assembly hasn’t taken up billionaires’ tax legislation yet, and Lamont hasn’t signaled support. But advocates say the postcard campaign is just the opening move. Watch for this fight to intensify as the legislature moves toward its budget deadline this spring. The numbers in Hartford don’t add up without new revenue, and someone is going to have to decide who pays.