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CLT UPDATE
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Grad Tax: The parasites
swarm again
|
A coalition of labor unions, religious
organizations, and liberal advocacy groups say they will press for a
ballot measure that would hike taxes on the wealthy and direct more
than $1 billion a year to education and transportation.
The proposed amendment to the state constitution,
if it clears a series of legal and political hurdles and wins voter
approval in 2018, would amount to a substantial revision of the
state’s tax code. It would scrap a flat state income tax — everyone
currently pays at a rate of 5.15 percent — and create a two-tiered
system, with all earnings over $1 million taxed at a rate 4
percentage points higher.
“Asking these high-earning individuals ... to pay
their fair share would allow us to improve our schools, make public
higher education more affordable, and fix our crumbling
transportation system,” Raise Up Massachusetts, the group behind the
amendment push, said in a statement to the Globe.
The measure could face stiff resistance from
antitax advocates and business groups. And Governor Charlie Baker,
soaring in public opinion polls, signaled Wednesday that he would
oppose the effort....
Massachusetts voters have repeatedly rejected
efforts to impose a graduated income tax, with steeper rates for
taxpayers the higher they climb the income scale. The last effort,
in 1994, lost by a two-to-one margin.
But proponents say the new proposal is simpler —
a tax on millionaires. And they argue the public mood has shifted
substantially since the 1990s. “That was a different time,” said
Harris Gruman, a Service Employees International Union official and
cochairman of Raise Up Massachusetts. “People didn’t feel as
threatened by economic insecurity.” ...
The group must file its language by Aug. 5 with
Attorney General Maura Healey, who will make a determination on its
legality.
If Healey signs off, advocates will have to
collect 64,750 signatures to proceed. Then one-quarter of the state
Legislature must vote to push the measure forward, in two
consecutive legislative sessions, before it can go to the voters in
November 2018.
Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg and House
Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, who have been briefed on the proposed
amendment, declined to comment Wednesday. But the proposal has
support in at least some corners of the Legislature....
The coalition includes some of the most powerful
unions in the state: SEIU, the Massachusetts Teachers Association,
the American Federation of Teachers-Massachusetts, and the
Massachusetts AFL-CIO.
Other groups on the organization’s steering
committee include the Coalition for Social Justice, Progressive
Massachusetts, and two faith-based organizations: Massachusetts
Communities Action Network and the Jewish Alliance for Law and
Social Action.
The Boston Globe
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Groups push for higher state tax on top earners
What part of no new taxes does the hackerama at
the State House not understand?
Just this week, the payroll Charlies in the
Legislature were complaining about the annual sales-tax holiday.
Don’t worry, it’s still on track for mid-August, but the very fact
that the more obnoxious trough-feeders are no longer afraid to
publicly bitch about it is not a propitious omen for the future.
And now the welfare industrial complex is gearing
up for another
run at imposing a graduated income tax on the
taxpayers.
The hacks need to do this at the ballot box,
where they have failed five times — in 1962, 1968, 1972, 1976 and
1994. But after 20 years of relentlessly dumbing down the
electorate, the Si-Se-Puede mob is obviously feeling its oats.
The grad tax is being touted by the usual
suspects — “labor unions, religious organizations and liberal
advocacy groups.”
They represent the needy. Just ask them. If you
want to keep the money that you earned, you’re greedy. Got that? ...
The state budget this year is $38.1 billion. Gov.
Baker vetoed $162 million in spending. That’s less than one-half of
1 percent, yet the hackerama is squealing like stuck pigs. That’s
because they think they and their fellow non-workers should get all
the money — your money.
Has anything really changed?
The Boston Herald
Friday, July 24, 2015
Hacks go after their ‘fair share’ – yours
By Howie Carr
It is obvious that Massachusetts residents don’t
want to pay higher income taxes. Voters have repeatedly rejected a
graduated income tax. If that’s not enough proof, presently on our
state tax forms there is an option to pay a higher percentage of
your income. Few people take the option. Even millionaire U.S. Sen.
Elizabeth Warren has admitted that she doesn’t pay the higher rate.
How much do you bet she endorses the ballot question?
Other states such as Maryland have tried
millionaire taxes. How did that work out? According to a study by
Change Maryland, 31,000 residents fled the state to avoid the tax.
It cost the state $1.7 billion in lost tax revenue.
Millionaires have the flexibility to move to
avoid an unfavorable tax code. Is their goal to send more people to
New Hampshire, where there are no sales or income taxes?
Massachusetts has a little less than half as many millionaires as
Maryland to scare away, so maybe we will lose only $1 billion....
Maybe you don’t care about millionaires. You
should. Liberals have always wanted an across-the-board graduated
income tax. Eventually they will push to lower the income level to
$500,000, then $250,000, then $100,000 and then everyone.
While other states are looking at repealing their
income taxes to attract people, Massachusetts is looking for ways to
push them out.
The Boston Herald
Monday, July 27, 2015
More taxes could have a moving effect
By Holly Robichaud
Five times — in 1962, 1968, 1972, 1976, and
1994 — Massachusetts voters have been asked to jettison their
state’s flat-rate income tax and replace it with a system of
graduated tax brackets. Each time they have unequivocally
refused to do so.
After that many rejections, even the most
importunate suitor usually gets the message. But for some
liberal true believers, all can never be right with the world as
long as Article 44 of the Massachusetts Constitution commands
that taxes “shall be levied at a uniform rate throughout the
commonwealth upon incomes derived from the same class of
property.”
So here we go again. Raise Up Massachusetts,
a coalition of left-wing activists, labor unions, and “social
justice” advocacy groups, is gearing up to put yet another
graduated income tax amendment on the ballot. As always, they
will preach the virtue of picking other people’s pockets,
promising lots and lots of expensive goodies at no cost to
anyone but millionaires....
Massachusetts voters have always seen through
the grad-tax hustle. Five times they’ve said no. If that wasn’t
clear enough, we can always make it six.
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
The return of the graduated-tax hustle
By Jeff Jacoby
To the Boston Globe:
Missing in Jeff Jacoby’s column “The return
of the grad tax hustle” (Globe, July 29th) was mention of the
major role Citizens for Limited Taxation played in the defeat of
the 1976 and 1994 grad tax ballot questions.
In fact CLT emerged as the state’s largest
pro-taxpayers’ organization after crusading against and winning
the 1976 battle. This led to CLT’s advocacy of a property tax
limit, which resulted in the Proposition 2½ victory on the 1980
ballot.
When the grad tax re-appeared on the 1994
ballot, CLT as the major opponent was ready again. Advocating
for the state’s overburdened taxpayers, CLT won another decisive
victory.
We will be poised to lead the charge once
more as the grad tax, slowly but surely, heads towards the 2018
ballot.
Chip Faulkner
Associate Director
Citizens for Limited Taxation
(Unpublished so far letter-to-the-editor)
Boston 2024’s clueless billionaires did
accomplish one thing that is almost impossible to do now — they
brought the entire city and state together, from Citizens for
Limited Taxation on the right to Black Lives Matter on the
left, the entire political spectrum spoke as one, in one word,
and that word was: “NOOOOOOO!!!!”
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Boston 2024 boondoggle united opponents
By Howie Carr
. . . Now if they could only get rid of that
pesky Hollywood tax credit.
Elimination of this subsidy, which primarily
benefits wealthy Tinseltown producers and actors, has united Citizens for Limited Taxation and The Boston Globe, who
don’t agree on much.
CLT’s Chip Ford of Marblehead calls it
“a boondoggle that continues to provide ... an annual $80
million windfall” to the film industry. And the Globe in a
recent editorial pointed out that a study by the Massachusetts
Budget and Policy Center revealed the tax credit produces a net
430 jobs a year worth $70,000 apiece — at a cost to the state of
$119,000 each.
Yet another study out of UMass Dartmouth
found that the tax credit has thus far cost the commonwealth
$400 million, but yielded only $260 million in in-state
spending. . . .
The Salem News
Friday, July 24, 2015
Weekly Column by Nelson Benton
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Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Here's comes the sixth attempt by the Gimme Lobby
to impose their Graduated Income Tax (Grad Tax), craved for decades
but without success. The tax-borrow-and-spend cabal is
composed of the usual suspects we've come to expect: Service
Employees International Union (SEIU), the Massachusetts Teachers
Association, the American Federation of Teachers-Massachusetts, and
the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, joined by the Coalition for Social
Justice, Progressive Massachusetts, Massachusetts Communities Action
Network, and the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action.
They are expected to file their petition with the
attorney general's office next Wednesday. If approved, they'll
need to collect 64,750 signatures, which should not be a problem for
them.
Assuming they succeed, the next step is their
petition for a constitution amendment will go before two successive
legislatures (with an intervening election between), likely later
this year (2015) then after the next statewide election (2016) and a
new legislature. The new Legislature (elected in 2016) will
need to vote on the proposed Grad Tax amendment. Both votes
need to pass by just 25 percent of the two Legislatures, during a
joint constitutional convention of the House and Senate.
Don't expect the Legislature to treat this
proposed constitutional amendment as they have others that have been
proposed by the people — e.g., term
limits or gay marriage. Those the Legislature opposed and
ignored to death. This proposed constitutional amendment in
all likelihood will pass easily and be on the 2018 ballot for the
voters to decide.
Don't let the "only millionaires" gimmick fool
you. Already they're trying to divide-and-conquer
— the nature of a graduated income tax.
Paraphrasing Pastor
Martin Niemöller's prophetic words:
First they came for the Millionaires, and I did
not speak out — because I was not a Millionaire. . . . "Then
they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me."
The current Flat Tax in Massachusetts has been
all that has kept them from hiking our income tax one bracket at a
time — Divide-and-Conquer. Taxing
the millionaires an additional four percent isn't where the real
money is — the real money is with the
middle-class. According to the state Department of Revenue
there were 15,499 millionaires in Massachusetts of the 3.3 million
who filed tax returns in 2012. And where this has been tried
before, as Holly Robichaud pointed out:
According to a study by Change Maryland, 31,000
residents fled the state to avoid the tax. It cost the state $1.7
billion in lost tax revenue.
Does anyone believe millionaires are stupid, that
they will remain in Massachusetts to pay one of the highest state
income tax rates in the nation on their earnings, 9 percent? The
trend nationally has been mass exodus from high-tax states to lower
or no tax states.
The Fiscal Times (Nov. 28, 2012, "Tax
Exodus: 5 States That Residents Are Fleeing") reported:
The past
few years have really put the squeeze on cash-strapped
states to find new sources of revenue. This environment
has generated a level of tax aggression from certain
states, which in turn has resulted in a net loss of
revenue instead of the intended gain. Residents have
begun voting with their feet, deciding to move out of
the state instead of thinning their pocket through
unwanted taxation. So which states are chasing away
their residents? And how does it impact you if you live
in one of them? We track migratory patterns through our
residency product data, and while some of the states are
no-brainers, others may surprise you. Following are our
top five ‘shrinking’ states in ascending order . . .
In an Oct. 8 2013 column in Front Page Mag,
Walter Williams wrote ("How
California could stop its population exodus"):
The
downside to such a tax strategy is the fact that people
are already leaving California in great numbers.
According to a Manhattan Institute study, "The
Great California Exodus: A Closer Look," by Thomas
Gray and Robert Scardamalia (October 2012), roughly
225,000 residents leave California each year — and have
done so for the past 10 years. They take their money
with them. Using census and Internal Revenue Service
data, Gray and Scardamalia estimate that California's
out-migration results in large shares of income going to
other states, mostly to Nevada ($5.67 billion), Arizona
($4.96 billion), Texas ($4.07 billion) and Oregon ($3.85
billion). That's the problem. California politicians can
fleece people in 2012, but there's no guarantee that
they can do the same in 2013 and later years; people can
leave. Also, keep in mind that rich people didn't become
rich by being stupid. They have ingenious ways to hide
their money.
California has one-eighth of the nation's population but
one-third of its welfare recipients.
Liberals aka "Progressives" are
ceaselessly relentless, but why must they be so economically
stupid
— and think we are too?
Looks like we'll need to squash their insatiable
greed again.
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Chip Ford |
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The Boston Globe
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Groups push for higher state tax on top earners
By David Scharfenberg
A coalition of labor unions, religious organizations, and liberal
advocacy groups say they will press for a ballot measure that would
hike taxes on the wealthy and direct more than $1 billion a year to
education and transportation.
The proposed amendment to the state constitution, if it clears a
series of legal and political hurdles and wins voter approval in
2018, would amount to a substantial revision of the state’s tax
code. It would scrap a flat state income tax — everyone currently
pays at a rate of 5.15 percent — and create a two-tiered system,
with all earnings over $1 million taxed at a rate 4 percentage
points higher.
“Asking these high-earning individuals ... to pay their fair share
would allow us to improve our schools, make public higher education
more affordable, and fix our crumbling transportation system,” Raise
Up Massachusetts, the group behind the amendment push, said in a
statement to the Globe.
The measure could face stiff resistance from antitax advocates and
business groups. And Governor Charlie Baker, soaring in public
opinion polls, signaled Wednesday that he would oppose the effort.
Baker spokeswoman Lizzy Guyton, in a statement to the Globe, did not
address the proposal directly but said, “Governor Baker does not
support tax increases on our hard-working families.”
About 14,000 Massachusetts taxpayers reported taxable income of $1
million or more in 2013, the last year for which a breakdown is
available. Many of them were clustered in Boston and wealthy suburbs
such as Newton, Wellesley, and Weston.
US Census data show Massachusetts is one of the most economically
stratified states in the country. It is one of eight states with a
flat state income tax rate.
Massachusetts voters have repeatedly rejected efforts to impose a
graduated income tax, with steeper rates for taxpayers the higher
they climb the income scale. The last effort, in 1994, lost by a
two-to-one margin.
But proponents say the new proposal is simpler — a tax on
millionaires. And they argue the public mood has shifted
substantially since the 1990s. “That was a different time,” said
Harris Gruman, a Service Employees International Union official and
cochairman of Raise Up Massachusetts. “People didn’t feel as
threatened by economic insecurity.”
The Great Recession and mounting concern about income inequality
have sparked interest in so-called “millionaires’ taxes,” with about
a dozen states raising rates on their highest income brackets since
2009.
The Massachusetts advocates say the new revenue would allow the
state to reverse what they say is chronic underinvestment in areas
such as early education and public transit. “That would help a lot
of families around Massachusetts,” said Noah Berger, president of
the left-leaning Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. “It would
also strengthen our economy in the long run.”
Dedicating the revenue to transportation and education offers some
political advantage; voters are less likely to give lawmakers a big
new pot of money to spend as they like. But there are questions
about the legality of the move. The state constitution bans any
amendment making “a specific appropriation.”
Advocates say earmarking the funds for broad categories of spending
such as transportation and education stops short of a “specific
appropriation.” And Cheryl Cronin, a lawyer for the coalition, which
is still drafting the precise language of the amendment, says she is
confident the final version will meet constitutional muster.
The group must file its language by Aug. 5 with Attorney General
Maura Healey, who will make a determination on its legality.
If Healey signs off, advocates will have to collect 64,750
signatures to proceed. Then one-quarter of the state Legislature
must vote to push the measure forward, in two consecutive
legislative sessions, before it can go to the voters in November
2018.
Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg and House Speaker Robert A.
DeLeo, who have been briefed on the proposed amendment, declined to
comment Wednesday. But the proposal has support in at least some
corners of the Legislature.
State Representative Jay Kaufman, a Lexington Democrat, says he has
a counter on his cell phone ticking down the days to the potential
voter referendum. On Wednesday, it stood at 1,203. “This is critical
for the economic future of the Commonwealth, and I think it’s
critical for our sense of who we are as a people,” he said.
Supporters of the flat income tax rate laud its simplicity and argue
that its broad application instills a measure of fiscal discipline
in the electorate and the Legislature.
But liberals have long called for a graduated tax that would shift
more of the burden onto higher income taxpayers.
The income tax rate currently stands at 5.15 percent and will
decline to 5 percent over time, in line with a state formula, if
economic growth remains strong. The proposed constitutional
amendment would add 4 percentage points to that base — boosting a 5
percent rate to 9 percent, for instance — for salary and investment
income over $1 million.
The amendment would index the $1 million threshold to inflation,
ensuring that it rises over time. That provision, organizers say, is
designed to spare middle-class families from the higher tax rate as
their incomes rise.
If the measure passes, Massachusetts’ top rate would be one of the
highest in the country, according to figures compiled by the Tax
Foundation, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington. But it
would not be the highest: California, for instance, has a top rate
of 13.3 percent.
Raise Up Massachusetts organizers say the income tax measure, which
they’ve labeled the “Fair Share Amendment,” is part of a broader
effort to level the playing field. Last year, the organization
played a key role in successful campaigns to hike the state’s
minimum wage and guarantee paid sick time for most workers.
The coalition includes some of the most powerful unions in the
state: SEIU, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the American
Federation of Teachers-Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO.
Other groups on the organization’s steering committee include the
Coalition for Social Justice, Progressive Massachusetts, and two
faith-based organizations: Massachusetts Communities Action Network
and the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action.
The Boston Herald
Friday, July 24, 2015
Hacks go after their ‘fair share’ – yours
By Howie Carr
No means no.
What part of no new taxes does the hackerama at the State House not
understand?
Just this week, the payroll Charlies in the Legislature were
complaining about the annual sales-tax holiday. Don’t worry, it’s
still on track for mid-August, but the very fact that the more
obnoxious trough-feeders are no longer afraid to publicly bitch
about it is not a propitious omen for the future.
And now the welfare industrial complex is gearing up for another
run
at imposing a graduated
income tax on the taxpayers.
The hacks need to do this at the ballot box, where they have failed
five times — in 1962, 1968, 1972, 1976 and 1994. But after 20 years
of relentlessly dumbing down the electorate, the Si-Se-Puede mob is
obviously feeling its oats.
The grad tax is being touted by the usual suspects — “labor unions,
religious organizations and liberal advocacy groups.”
They represent the needy. Just ask them. If you want to keep the
money that you earned, you’re greedy. Got that?
The pitch is, everyone should give his or her fair share. Er, does
that include the tax-exempt “religious organizations” that want to
increase everybody else’s taxes? When do they start chipping in
their fair share?
The so-called advocates assure
us that their proposed tax
increase
would be restricted to millionaires. Yeah, for about a week. After
all, this is the same crowd that promised you property tax relief in
2007, before which they promised to cut the state income tax back to
5 percent once the 1989 fiscal emergency ended.
They were lying then, both times, and they are lying
now.
Remember Question 1 last year, which halted the automatic increases
in the gas tax. The same coatholders now making six-figure salaries
at Boston 2024
claimed that every
penny of all that extra money
collected
at the pump would go to the “infrastructure.” They were
lying then, too. They
wanted to rob you to get money for the T
hacks who retire with full pensions at age 41, and to hire more of
them.
Anyone who was against the automatic tax increases was greedy,
remember? The greedy taxpayers killed the tax, 53-47,
despite being
outspent by the very needy public sector hacks, 30-1.
Same thing happened in 2010, when the hacks imposed a sales tax on
the excise tax on alcohol. The voters rose up and smote the
tax-fattened hyenas.
Speaking of which, at the State House hearing this week on the tax
holiday, Sen. Mike Rodrigues (D-Westport) denounced it as
“irresponsible” because it only “shifts habits.”
This is some-
one who knows
how to “shift habits” to avoid paying
his fair share. After voting for the sales tax on alcohol in 2009,
he
was photographed at a New Hampshire liquor store loading up the
trunk of his car with tax-free booze.
More recently, Rodrigues spoke out against reducing the income tax,
as mandated by law. Instead, he wanted to take that money from
taxpayers and give it to people who don’t pay taxes. This welfare
kiss was the brainchild of Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, who
last week admitted that because of a loophole, he pays next to no
federal income taxes on his $102,000 salary.
Higher taxes for you, no taxes for Rosenberg. Again, tell me who the
greedy ones are here?
The state budget this year is $38.1 billion. Gov. Baker vetoed $162
million in spending. That’s less than one-half of 1 percent, yet the
hackerama is squealing like stuck pigs. That’s because they think
they and their fellow non-workers should get all the money — your
money.
Has anything really changed?
Listen to Howie Carr from 3-7 p.m. today on AM 680 WRKO.
The Boston Herald
Monday, July 27, 2015
More taxes could have a moving effect
By Holly Robichaud
It’s back.
Liberals are going to push for a graduated income tax ballot
question. Never mind that voters have rejected this over and over
again.
Last year they targeted drivers with automatic gas tax hikes and
that did not work. Now they have set their sights on millionaires.
According to the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition of public sector
unions and liberal special-interest groups, millionaires have to pay
their fair share. Who said they were not paying their fair share?
There’s a reason we are called Taxachusetts. This effort has nothing
to do with fairness. It’s all about trying to grab more money.
It is obvious that Massachusetts residents don’t want to pay higher
income taxes. Voters have repeatedly rejected a graduated income
tax. If that’s not enough proof, presently on our state tax forms
there is an option to pay a higher percentage of your income. Few
people take the option. Even millionaire U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren
has admitted that she doesn’t pay the higher rate. How much do you
bet she endorses the ballot question?
Other states such as Maryland have tried millionaire taxes. How did
that work out? According to a study by Change Maryland, 31,000
residents fled the state to avoid the tax. It cost the state $1.7
billion in lost tax revenue.
Millionaires have the flexibility to move to avoid an unfavorable
tax code. Is their goal to send more people to New Hampshire, where
there are no sales or income taxes? Massachusetts has a little less
than half as many millionaires as Maryland to scare away, so maybe
we will lose only $1 billion.
It cannot be said enough: The commonwealth doesn’t have a revenue
problem. But that doesn’t concern the public sector unions — SEIU
and Massachusetts Teachers
Association — that have something to
gain by additional revenue. They want more tax dollars to go to
public transit and education. Did they miss the news that the T had
$2.2 billion in unspent funds? How about Pioneer Institute’s report
about the T wasting over $250 million just within the bus
maintenance department? The unions certainly don’t want to
acknowledge employee absenteeism as a problem within public transit.
Maybe you don’t care about millionaires. You should. Liberals have
always wanted an across-the-board graduated income tax. Eventually
they will push to lower the income level to $500,000, then $250,000,
then $100,000 and then everyone.
While other states are looking at repealing their income taxes to
attract people, Massachusetts is looking for ways to push them out.
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
The return of the graduated-tax hustle
By Jeff Jacoby
Five times — in 1962, 1968, 1972, 1976, and 1994 — Massachusetts
voters have been asked to jettison their state’s flat-rate income
tax and replace it with a system of graduated tax brackets. Each
time they have unequivocally refused to do so.
After that many rejections, even the most importunate suitor usually
gets the message. But for some liberal true believers, all can never
be right with the world as long as Article 44 of the Massachusetts
Constitution commands that taxes “shall be levied at a uniform rate
throughout the commonwealth upon incomes derived from the same class
of property.”
So here we go again. Raise Up Massachusetts, a coalition of
left-wing activists, labor unions, and “social justice” advocacy
groups, is gearing up to put yet another graduated income tax
amendment on the ballot. As always, they will preach the virtue of
picking other people’s pockets, promising lots and lots of expensive
goodies at no cost to anyone but millionaires.
More than a century ago, the Legislature recognized the fundamental
inequity of imposing higher marginal tax rates on higher incomes, a
perpetual invitation to class warfare. Lawmakers refused to allow
the practice in Massachusetts, even as most other jurisdictions
embraced it, and they went so far as to write that prohibition into
the state constitution. Plainly it is a stance that has stood the
test of time, having been reconfirmed at the polls on five separate
occasions.
Still, liberal Democrats like state Senator Jamie Eldridge, who has
filed a constitutional amendment to overturn Article 44 and mandate
graduated income tax rates, hope the sixth time will be the charm.
Like every grad-tax advocate, his pitch is one part soak-the-rich
envy, one part government-spending wish list, and one part
feel-their-pain con job. Some concoctions improve with age. This
isn’t one of them.
“Few people would consider a tax system to be fair if the poorer you
are, the more of your income you pay in taxes — and yet that’s
exactly what the Massachusetts tax system currently does,” argues
Eldridge. Switching to progressive tax brackets, he says, could
“potentially” mean “lower taxes for the majority of Massachusetts
residents.” And all it requires is “asking a small percentage of
residents with very high income to pay their fair share.”
If Eldridge and his fellow legislators really yearn to lower taxes,
they can do so any day of the week. But broad-based tax relief isn’t
what the grad-tax lobby hungers for. On the contrary: The grad-taxers’
goal, as WGBH radio and TV personality Jim Braude has written, is to
“make it easier for the Legislature to raise taxes when they need
to.” Braude should know — as the former director of the Tax Equity
Alliance of Massachusetts, he ran the “Yes” campaign the last time a
graduated income tax amendment was on the ballot. (It was crushed in
a 2-1 landslide.)
Notwithstanding their rhetoric about “fairness” and the
disproportionate share of income paid by the poor to the tax man,
the activists evade the simple fact that of all the taxes levied in
Massachusetts — on income, sales, meals, gasoline, tobacco, liquor,
and property — the income tax is already the most progressive.
According to Department of Revenue data, all the other state taxes
take a much larger bite out of lower- and middle-income residents’
earnings than out of those in the highest income bracket. For
example, taxpayers in the bottom income quintile lose 7.5 percent of
their income to sales taxes; for taxpayers in the top quintile, the
comparable figure is 0.8 percent. The state income tax is different.
Though there is a single flat rate for regular income (currently
5.15 percent), there are also exemptions, credits, and deductions
skewed to ease the tax burden on low-income earners, as well as a
much higher tax on capital gains (12 percent), which overwhelmingly
affects high-income earners. As a result, the effective income tax
rate for taxpayers in the bottom fifth is only 0.6 percent. For
those in the middle fifth, it’s 3.6 percent. For the top fifth, 4.75
percent. Progressivity defined.
What’s more, taxpayers making $100,000 and up contribute a whopping
70 percent of the state’s income tax revenues. Those making $50,000
or less? Only 11 percent.
Massachusetts voters have always seen through the grad-tax hustle.
Five times they’ve said no. If that wasn’t clear enough, we can
always make it six.
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Boston 2024 boondoggle united opponents
By Howie Carr
Finally, at long last, someone has gone broke underestimating the
intelligence of the American public.
And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch — Boston 2024. There
is a God.
The lesson here is from Abraham Lincoln: You can’t fool all of the
people all of the time — even in Massachusetts. It’s a great victory
for the people, but it could easily have gone the other way. What if
Marsha Coakley had been elected governor? The state would already be
on the hook for $5 billion in cost overruns.
Like most flim-flams, the Boston Olympics collapsed abruptly.
Perplexing, isn’t it, considering that just last Thursday, Sweaty
Steve Pagliuca of Boston 2024 had assured everyone that the Olympics
would definitely end in the black, and that even if they didn’t,
Boston 2024 had plenty of insurance to cover any shortfalls.
I guess all his promises were, what was that word he kept using on
TV, “hyperbole.”
Boston 2024’s clueless billionaires did accomplish one thing that is
almost impossible to do now — they brought the entire city and state
together, from Citizens for Limited Taxation on the right to
Black Lives Matter on the left, the entire political spectrum spoke
as one, in one word, and that word was: “NOOOOOOO!!!!”
My only regret is that I couldn’t make it over to the Globe for the
candlelight vigil last evening. How many forests perished over the
last few months to print the breathless puff pieces run by the
bowtied bum-kissers? (My favorite: “Can David Ortiz Save the
Olympics?”)
I guess now John Henry is going to have to find a new bigger fool to
take that white elephant on Morrissey Boulevard off his hands.
Speaking of
legends in their own minds, whatever happened to John
“Thanks Dad” Fish? Remember his picture in a magazine recently with
the caption, “I Run This Town.” What town would that be? He was so
smug, so haughty in his “Do You Know Who I Am?” attitude that he
finally had to hand over the reins to Sweaty Steve Pagliuca?
As Thanks Dad mused when the first rumblings of dissent began: “Who
are they and what currency do they have?”
We know what Boston 2024’s currency was, or at least what its color
was — green. And they spread it around, but good. And now they’ve
all been humbled by what Marty Walsh called “about 10 people on
Twitter and a couple people out there who are constantly beating the
drumbeat.”
You know, like Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson, state reps Geoff
Diehl and Shaunna O’Connell, and Evan Falchuk, the former candidate
for governor. All they did was represent their constituents, the
bastards.
What happens now to all of Deval’s stooges on the Boston 2024
payroll? How many political defeats is this in a row for Doug Rubin—
five? Six? Let’s hope his next gig is with the crew of pirates
promoting a state graduated income tax.
Boston 2024 won’t be down for breakfast. But one question lingers:
Where are we going to put the velodrome now?
Listen to Howie 3-7 p.m. on AM 680 WRKO.
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Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪
PO Box 1147 ▪ Marblehead, MA 01945
▪ 508-915-3665
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