Surtax for health care

Geoffrey Lawrence

The Heritage Foundation has released this brief fact sheet that shows how many small businesses and tax filers in Nevada would be adversely impacted by the President’s proposed surtax on income taxes. The new “surtax” would raise the top marginal tax rates by 5.4 percent in order to finance a portion of the costs of a nationalized health care system.

In Nevada, 17,200 total filers would be hit with the new tax and 10,300 small businesses would be adversely impacted by the new tax. The inevitable result? Even higher unemployment, especially among lower-income workers as the higher cost of employing those workers would, in many cases, price them out of the labor market. Sure, they can get “free” health care, but it would come at the cost of everything else.

Geoffrey Lawrence

Geoffrey Lawrence

Director of Research

Geoffrey Lawrence is director of research at Nevada Policy.

Lawrence has broad experience as a financial executive in the public and private sectors and as a think tank analyst. Lawrence has been Chief Financial Officer of several growth-stage and publicly traded manufacturing companies and managed all financial reporting, internal control, and external compliance efforts with regulatory agencies including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.  Lawrence has also served as the senior appointee to the Nevada State Controller’s Office, where he oversaw the state’s external financial reporting, covering nearly $10 billion in annual transactions. During each year of Lawrence’s tenure, the state received the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting Award from the Government Finance Officers’ Association.

From 2008 to 2014, Lawrence was director of research and legislative affairs at Nevada Policy and helped the institute develop its platform of ideas to advance and defend a free society.  Lawrence has also written for the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, with particular expertise in state budgets and labor economics.  He was delighted at the opportunity to return to Nevada Policy in 2022 while concurrently serving as research director at the Reason Foundation.

Lawrence holds an M.A. in international economics from American University in Washington, D.C., an M.S. and a B.S. in accounting from Western Governors University, and a B.A. in international relations from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.  He lives in Las Vegas with his beautiful wife, Jenna, and their two kids, Carson Hayek and Sage Aynne.