DFL blunder lands Minnesotans with a federal tax liability

Last week Governor Walz finally found a tax he didn’t like when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that the “Walz checks” received by more than 2 million Minnesotans this year will be taxable by the federal government after all.

The payments, which the governor originally promised would amount to up to $2,600 for a family, ended up, after the DFL’s orgy of spending, totaling a maximum of $1,300 for a family. Now, depending on the amount of the rebate and an individual’s federal tax bracket, recipients may have to hand up to $286 of that over to the feds.

Gov. Walz was not happy, and responded with that trick he’s recently developed of trying to sound like a regular guy by swearing: the IRS’s decision was “bullshit,” the governor fumed. But the governor has nobody to blame but his own party.

As the Star Tribune reports, “The federal government ended the COVID health emergency May 11.” At that point, the state legislature had been in session for five months and passed a bewildering volume of bills, including its “trans refuge” bill and a bill authorizing driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. Yet, the legislation authorizing the rebate checks wasn’t signed until May 24, two weeks after the deadline for counting as a tax free, COVID-19 relief payment. So, the feds are taking their cut.

Rep. Angie Craig wailed that “Minnesotans shouldn’t be treated differently than other states have been across the country,” but legislators in those other states did their job in a timely manner, unlike those in Minnesota. The result of this dawdling is a federal tax liability for a couple of million Minnesotans. That isn’t the IRS’s fault: its the DFL’s.