When the creation of a Business Enterprise Tax (BET) was being debated by the New Hampshire legislature in 1993, Democratic State Sen. Beverly Hollingsworth of Hampton raised a prescient question.

“Many fear that the low rate of only a quarter of one percent (0.25 percent) is just a starting point (for the BET). That while we soon have to deal with the Medicaid money disappearing, we may find ourselves with a $150 million (deficit) that we need to find to plug the hole.”

Her Republican colleague, David Currier of Henniker, had the same concern.

“That quarter of one percent is not much right now,” he told the Senate of the proposed rate. But as pressure rises for more state spending, he asked, “Does that quarter of one percent then become a half of a percent? One percent? Three percent?

See Full Page