Urging Lawmakers to Do Better for Business

By Michele N. Siekerka, NJBIA President and CEO On Apr 29, 2024

The governor’s proposed $1 billion tax hike on New Jersey’s largest job-creators to fund mass transit has grabbed the most attention lately, but it is not the only anti-business policy in his FY25 budget plan that the Legislature should toss onto the trash heap of bad ideas.

Buried in the “Other Revenues” section on page 62 of Gov. Phil Murphy’s FY25 Budget in Brief is a proposed “truck traffic excise fee.” This is a sugarcoated name for another new tax targeting the business community, and it could ultimately affect the cost of millions of products that move in and out of New Jersey warehouses and manufacturing facilities daily.

New Jersey is a transportation and logistics state. This sector of our state’s economy provides up to 200,000 jobs and about $25 billion in GDP. Over 13,000 transport and logistics businesses are located here, including some of the world’s largest companies. The governor often touts the state’s thriving transportation and logistics industry as one of our biggest assets. 

Yet the so-called “buck-a-truck” budget proposal inexplicably hits the industry with a $10 million nuisance tax that impacts not just giant e-commerce warehouses along the New Jersey Turnpike, but potentially thousands of manufacturers located across this state where trucks are moving products in and out of facilities. The reason for the proposal wasn’t described in the governor’s budget, but some in Trenton have said it’s for a trucking study. Allowing for that, however, would be a slippery slope and certainly lay the groundwork now for much higher truck taxes down the road.

Research shows these types of anti-business policies undermine the state’s economic development strategy. They tag New Jersey as a difficult and expensive place to run a company. NJBIA’s message to legislative policymakers during budget hearings has been simple: Do better for business.

This state already has among the nation’s highest income taxes, property taxes, and corporate taxes. The governor’s $55.9 billion FY25 spending plan cements an anti-business reputation by reneging on his public promise to sunset the corporate business tax charge. Instead, he would replace the temporary CBT surcharge with a permanent, retroactive $1 billion corporate transit tax, saddling New Jersey businesses with the highest corporate tax rate (11.5%) in the US.

NJBIA has been out front at legislative budget hearings about how anti-business policies – especially the proposed corporate transit tax – harm our job-creators, our economy and New Jersey’s future. The buck-a-truck tax in the draft budget’s fine print may be small potatoes by comparison, but it adds insult to injury, nonetheless. We are calling on our state leaders to do better for New Jersey businesses.

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