Republican Michael Whatley Highlights Tax Relief For Service Workers At Zebulon Campaign Stop

This Wednesday, Republican Senate Candidate Michael Whatley help a campaign stop in Zebulon to discuss the impact of Republican’s “No Tax On Tips” legislation on service workers. The roundtable featured several people who work in the service industry that directly benefit from no tax on tips.  

Whatley opened the roundtable saying, “We talk about the workers here in North Carolina, it really comes down to a pretty simple premise. I want you to save home more money and I want you to keep more money. I want you to make more money and I want you to keep more money. When we talk about that, talking about creating more jobs, talking about better jobs on the front end, and we're also talking about lowering prices and talking about lowering taxes. We want to make sure that you're going to keep more money, you know, and obviously what we have seen over the course of this campaign and the conversations is a lot of talk about the economy and that's absolutely appropriate. 

Whatley continued, “The economy is always going to be a driver for us, but it's important to note that Roy Cooper and I have a very different stance when it comes to the things that need to happen for you to make more money and for you to keep more money, right? And so we talk about taxes. Roy Cooper voted to raise your taxes when he was in the legislature. He vetoed six different tax cuts when he was the governor and when he announced that he was running for Senate, proudly announced that he would have against the Working Families Tax Cut Bill. That would have basically raised every household's taxes in North Carolina by an average of $5,700 versus what you just had to pay for on April 15th.” 

He ended his opening remarks saying, “I think that legislation was tremendously important. When we talk about no tax on tips, we talk about no tax on overtime, we talk about no tax on social security, those are provisions that were created to support North Carolina families, right? We've got 264,000 people in North Carolina who are tipped workers who make their money in the service industries making tips. For you to have no income tax on those tips is tremendously, tremendously important.” 

Smash Masters, a burger joint in Zebulon, hosted the event. The owners said that the tax relief from the Working Families Tax Cut provides critical tax relief for their business, helping them retain staff. One of the participants at the roundtable said that “No tax on tips” helps her keep more of her money she earns as a serve helping her go through school.  

After the roundtable, the Blue Ridge Times asked Whatley about his plan to address housing affordability. Whatley respond, “the first thing is we have to get interests down. Also its worthwhile what the President is doing to address corporate ownership of housing, so we can make sure people are buying those houses and living in those house right now. Also, Rick Scott down in Florida has a proposal that would allow people to have tax-free savings the same way they do for college on 529 accounts to use for down payments on houses. That is definitely something worth looking at.”  

When asked about the property tax reforms being considered by the North Carolina General Assembly, Whatley responded, “You know, look, I’ve never seen a tax I didn’t want to cut. And so I think that when we look at what the overall tax burden is for every North Carolina family, we want to make sure we bring that down.”