Rhode Island

Rhode Island’s millionaire’s tax a ‘riverboat gamble’ | Opinion

Published

3 days ago

April 4, 2026

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Rhode Island’s millionaire’s tax a ‘riverboat gamble’ | Opinion

Gary Sasse
| Guest columnist

Rhode Island reformed its tax code after 2009, improving its business tax climate ranking from 46th to 40th.
Democratic gubernatorial candidates are now proposing to raise the top income tax rate from 5.99% to 8.99% for incomes over $1 million.
Supporters of the tax increase believe it will have minimal impact on growth, while opponents fear it will harm state competitiveness.
The author suggests key questions must be answered about the economic impact before implementing such a significant tax policy change.

In the 2009 State of the State address Governor Don Carcieri said he was “tired of people writing stories about Rhode Island being ‘tax hell’.” In response the governor convened a Tax Policy Strategic Workgroup. As state director of revenue, I chaired the Workgroup. We were charged with developing a tax strategy so that Rhode Island’s tax structure would be a competitive advantage in retaining jobs and recruiting businesses.

Over the next few legislative sessions, the state’s tax code was reformed. The top marginal income tax rate was reduced from 9.90 percent to 5.99 percent. As a quid pro quo itemization was eliminated, the standard deduction and personal exemptions were phased out for high-income filers, the alternative minimum tax was eliminated, tax brackets and exemptions were indexed to inflation, and the numbers of tax credits were reduced from 45 to 9.

The method of apportioning the corporate income tax was modernized, and the tax rate was reduced from nine percent to seven percent – the lowest rate in New England. The threshold of the estate tax deduction was doubled and indexed to inflation.

As a result, Rhode Island escaped the designation of having one of the ten worst tax climates for business. In 2011, when the General Assembly began addressing tax reform, the conservative Tax Foundation’s Business Tax Climate Index ranked the Ocean State’s tax climate 46^th (5^th worst). By 2025 it improved to 39^th. This year Rhode Island ranks 40^th.

Currently both Democratic gubernatorial candidates are proposing a tax policy “sea-change.” They are promoting legislation to impose an 8.99 percent rate on taxable incomes over $1 million, a 50 percent increase over the current rate of 5.99 percent.

Deciding the merits of this proposal should be based on the tenets of sound tax policy: equity, competitiveness, and transparency. Equity is achieved when no group carries a disproportionate share of the tax burden. Transparency is achieved when the system is user-friendly and efficiently administered.

The most difficult principle to measure is competitiveness. Economists have not always agreed on the effect tax burdens have on the economic decisions made by households and businesses.

Can a top marginal income tax rate be increased by 50 percent and not have a demonstrable impact on job growth and investments?

It will be challenging to resolve this question because the “peer reviewed research” supports different conclusions. Academic research through the 1960s generally found limited evidence that tax rate differentials influenced business growth and location decisions. In the 1980s, studies found the impact of tax burdens on private sector economic activity depended on specific circumstances. More recent empirical studies indicate tax changes do influence economic behavior. However, there are difference as to the degree of such influences.

Rhode Island’s business leaders opposed to the 50 percent increase in the top marginal tax rate point to state competitiveness rankings, potential out-migration of people and capital, fiscal volatility, and the impact on small business. Progressive proponents cite data suggesting top-rate increases rarely affect state-level growth, and high-income migration responses are marginal.

Given economic and international uncertainties, could the timing of income tax rate increase be a riverboat gamble with Rhode Island’s future economic well-being? An informed decision should provide data and analysis on the following threshold questions.

What is the forecasted impact of the millionaire’s tax on state GDP growth, employment, and revenue feedback effects?

Without doing harm, how high can the rate be set relative to competitor states? If the top marginal rate was increased by 15% compared to the 50%, how would the gamble be mitigated?

What will the new revenue be used for – education, infrastructure, housing, working families tax relief, or balancing the budget?

What are the costs and benefits of maintaining the status quo?

Will Rhode Island’s availability of skilled labor, preparedness for an artificial intelligence economy, and other amenities minimize any potential economic impacts of a 50 percent increase in the top income tax rate? Some states may have competitive advantages that could reduce the economic risks, while others may not.

Gary Sasse served as director of the R.I. Departments of Revenue and Administration.

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Rhode Island

Hate self-checkout at the grocery store? A RI bill to limit it is back.

Published

4 hours ago

April 7, 2026

Press Room

Hate self-checkout at the grocery store? A RI bill to limit it is back.

Rhode Island lawmakers are considering a bill to limit grocery stores to eight self-checkout kiosks.
The proposed legislation would also require one employee for every two self-checkout stations.
The bill specifically targets grocery stores, which has drawn criticism from business associations.

PROVIDENCE – As lawmakers debate raising Rhode Island’s minimum wage, which would impact many grocery store workers, a bill to limit the number of self-checkout lanes at grocery stores is again stirring conversation.

Rep. Megan Cotter, D-Exeter, Hopkinton, Richmond, introduced a version of her initial bill, proposed in 2023, to reduce the number of self-checkout kiosks a grocery store can have open, and mandate the amount of labor required to operate them. Her bill, H 7290, has eight co-sponsors in the House, while Senate President Valarie Lawson, D-East Providence, introduced a companion bill in the Senate, S 2342.

When Cotter’s bill was first introduced, it included a mandate that grocers give a 10% discount to customers who used self-checkout for more than 10 items. The newest iteration scraps that language in favor of a more streamlined approach:

Grocery stores can have no more than eight self-checkout kiosks operating at one time.
One checkout line must be manned for every two self-checkout kiosks.
One worker must be assigned to every two self-checkout stations.

Here’s how the math on the self-checkout proposal works:

For a store operating the maximum number of self-checkout kiosks, eight, this means the store would be running four lines with cashiers at a time. That same store would also need four people monitoring the self-checkout stations, for a total of eight workers across 12 cash registers, both manned and unmanned.

Limiting the number of self-checkout aisles a store can have is all about preserving jobs and hours worked, she previously said.

Why stores are using self-checkout

In 2023, Cotter said her original bill was partially a function of her frustration with using the Walmart self-checkout kiosks.

Problems with self-checkout kiosks abound as each industry, from groceries to pharmacies to hardware to big box stores like Walmart, sets different parameters and triggers on self-checkout machines.

Clements’ Marketplace Operations Director Charles Anthony IV wrote in testimony against Cotter’s bill that the grocery, with locations in Bristol and Portsmouth, installed the self-checkout kiosks to be their “fast lanes.”

“With smaller orders often causing backups across the Front End, the Fast Lanes have helped to maintain a steady pace and take care of our customers more efficiently,” Anthony wrote.

At Target, self-checkout was meant to be limited to people with 10 items or fewer.

Why limit self-checkout?

Cotter’s bill only targets grocery stores. That caught the attention of Rhode Island Food Dealers Association President Scott Bromberg, who submitted testimony against the proposal.

“This proposal is especially egregious because it specifically targets only grocery stores,” Bromberg wrote. “Big box retailers, along with hardware stores, pharmacies, dollar stores, fast food chains and more utilize self-checkout to allow them to deploy their staff where needed most.”

The bill mostly targets traditional grocery stores, but also hits pharmacies, like CVS and Walgreens, but might not include big box retailers like Walmart and Target.

It defines groceries as:

Raw or processed food or drink
Prescription and over-the-counter drugs
Hygiene items when a store also sells food, drink and “miscellaneous household items” like laundry detergent and dishwasher soap.

A grocery store is defined as a business that gets most of its revenue from selling “groceries.”

Shaw’s and Star Market’s Jim O’Leary wrote that 60% to 65% of its transactions are done via self-checkout systems and 10% are done through its drive-up platform.

“Only approximately 25% of customers utilize traditional staffed registers. This distribution highlights the importance of maintaining adaptive service models to accommodate a broad spectrum of consumer preferences, thereby enhancing the overall shopping experience and most importantly convenience,” O’Leary wrote.

Which RI stores use self-checkout?

Stores in the state offer a wide variety of takes on self-checkout.

At many Five Below stores, self-checkout is the only option. Home Depot has replaced most checkout lanes at the front of many its stores with self-checkout lanes.

At the discount grocer Aldi, many stores have open self-checkout kiosks. Depending on how slow business is, it can sometimes take a few minutes for a cashier to return to a regular checkout lane, as employees do double duty as cashiers and stockers. Customers are also expected to do their own bagging.

Stop & Shops usually have a variety of self-checkout kiosks and cashiers, but the kiosks practically shout at customers and the scales, meant to prevent theft, often wrongly register item weights, forcing a worker to override the machine after an item is bagged too quickly, or not quickly enough.

Many CVS stores also have the self-checkout kiosks.

Self-checkouts have also moved into the world of fast food, for example at Taco Bell and McDonald’s, shifting workers away from being cashiers.

Is low-skill labor worth keeping?

The two-self checkout restriction bills are aimed at preserving jobs often classified as entry level or low skill.

The worth and value of those jobs is increasingly under fire by legislators and the business community, especially as the debate over minimum wage increases rages.

Rep. Stephen Casey, D-Woonsocket, made the case during a hearing on March 18 that it would be unfair for the minimum wage to be increased because public sector workers don’t make enough, making an argument that low-skilled labor deserves to be paid less.

“So the average fireman in Rhode Island makes $28.06 an hour, so you’re saying that the guy that’s flipping burgers should make $20 an hour?” Casey asked during the hearing.

That argument also appeared during the debate over a bill to give health care workers time-and-a-half on Sundays, as Woonsocket resident Jason Romblad said he was “amazed that people selling us a pack of gum will get time-and-a-half on these days, but a health care worker who takes care of us when we are sick and hurt do not get it.”

A separate bill to strip caterers and commissary workers of time-and-a-half on Sundays and holidays was lauded by businesses groups that called for ending the practice entirely. National Federation of Independent Businesses State Director Christopher Carlozzi wrote in support of ending the benefit, claiming that paying minimum wage workers $24 an hour on Sundays instead of the mandated $16 (a $64 pre-tax difference for an eight-hour shift) means the difference between opening a shop on Sundays or leaving it closed.

According to the state’s latest Occupational Employment And Wage Statistics, published in May 2025, cashiers, an estimated 9,710 of them in the state, make a mean average of $15.90 an hour. That climbs to $16.67 an hour for “experienced wage.” The entry wage was $14 an hour, the minimum wage in 2024.

In January, the minimum wage increased to $16 an hour and it increases to $17 an hour on Jan. 1, 2027.

Other large groups of similarly paid professions are fast food and counter workers, 12,650 of them; dining room and cafeteria attendants, 2,720 of them; and dishwashers, 2,830 of them.

The statistics count an estimated 493,800 employed, making cashiers 2% of the total employment in the state.

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Rhode Island

Mashed Names Rhode Island’s Best Buffet Restaurant

Published

16 hours ago

April 6, 2026

Press Room

Mashed Names Rhode Island’s Best Buffet Restaurant

CHARLESTOWN, RI — The food website Mashed named Rhode Island’s best buffet restaurant.

Mashed went with The Nordic in Charlestown, despite its prices.

“The Nordic is one of the most expensive buffets in the country, so don’t expect a cheap meal when you sit down at the popular waterside eatery,” the Mashed story said. “The price for adults is $145 per person, $60 for children aged 8 to 12, and $35 for children aged 3 to 7. That sounds pretty steep, but considering that you can fill up on prime rib, a high-quality and costly cut of steak, it seems worth it for a special occasion.

“One of the main draws of dining at The Nordic is that you can chow down on prime rib,” according to Mashed, but there is much, much more, including lobster, snow crab legs, fried scallops, scallops wrapped in bacon and black angus filet mignon.

See the full Mashed story here.

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Rhode Island

Lawmakers seek permanent funding for referral hotlines connecting families to mental health care

Published

1 day ago

April 6, 2026

Press Room

Lawmakers seek permanent funding for referral hotlines connecting families to mental health care

A bill heard by a Rhode Island Senate panel last week would fold funding for telephone hotlines used by pediatricians and family doctors to connect kids and parents to mental health treatment hotlines into a health department program funded by insurer contributions.

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