For all their talk about lowering property taxes, New Hampshire Democrats’ answer always begins and ends in the same place: government needs more money. They are not proposing to reduce the spending that created the problem. Instead, they want to raise taxes on New Hampshire small businesses, route the money through Concord, send it back out as more government spending and call it property tax relief.
Their solution is a taxation shell game, not actual relief. State funding for public education is already at record-high levels. The current state budget provides more than $2 billion for public education, and New Hampshire already spends nearly $25,000 per pupil per year, making us one of the highest per-pupil spending states in the country. Yet Granite Staters have not seen the promised property tax relief from all this additional spending. If sending more state money lowered property taxes, then the relief would have arrived by now.
Instead, school budgets continue growing despite record-low enrollment. Schools spend the additional money, add the new spending to their baseline and return to taxpayers for even more the following year. This is not a revenue problem. It is a spending problem, and raising taxes on our small businesses will not solve it.
Democrats also know perfectly well that raising taxes raises prices. Just look at how they reacted when President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on foreign goods. New Hampshire Democrats spent months warning that tariffs would increase prices, hurt small businesses and cost Granite Staters more money. At one point, the New Hampshire Democratic Party warned that tariffs could cost families an additional $1,200 per year.
Their argument was that businesses importing foreign goods would pass at least some of the added tax along to customers through higher prices, and they were not wrong. But why do they pretend the same economic reality disappears when they want to raise taxes directly on New Hampshire small businesses?
Apparently, a tax connected to foreign goods raises prices, but a tax imposed directly on a New Hampshire small business does not. A restaurant, contractor, childcare center or local store cannot print money. If Democrats win and raise taxes on New Hampshire’s small businesses, those businesses must recover the cost through higher prices, reduced hiring or lower wages. Taxing a business here in New Hampshire is far more likely to raise prices than taxing goods arriving from somewhere else because the cost is imposed directly on the businesses serving our communities. By their own words about tariffs, Democrats know that taxes imposed on businesses are passed along to consumers. They simply do not care when the tax increase is one they want.
Their favorite phrase is that “the state should pay more,” as though the State of New Hampshire has its own independent source of wealth. It does not. This is a state of roughly 1.4 million people. There is no magical pile of other people’s money sitting in Concord. When the state pays more, the people pay more through small business taxes, fees or some other scheme. It is a game of left pocket, right pocket. Either way, you pay.
The real objection Democrats have to property taxes is not that taxes are too high. It is that property taxes are visible. Homeowners receive a bill showing exactly how much government is taking from them. They notice the increase and start asking where the money is going, and Democrats do not want people asking those questions because the answer does not fit their narrative. Their solution is to hide that burden in small-business taxes and higher prices, send the money through the state budget and pretend that someone else magically paid it.
Property taxes will only come down when spending is brought under control. Democrats do not have a plan to do that because they do not believe government should have to spend less. Their entire proposal is to move the bill, hide the cost and demand more money, all while running on “affordability” and hoping you do not notice that you end up paying more.
Rep. Ross Berry represents the towns of Goffstown and Weare.