A PROMISE TO KEEP: 5%
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A Ballot Committee of
Citizens for Limited Taxation & Government
PO Box 408 * Peabody, MA 01960
Phone:(617) 248-0022 * E-Mail: cltg@cltg.org
Visit our web-page at: http://cltg.org
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*** CLT&G Update ***
Wednesday, March 4, 1998

Greetings activists and supporters:

It didn’t take very long for me to have to eat yesterday’s words, as the Boston Globe today printed Barbara’s response to their editorial of last Thursday. It’s been a pretty busy week for CLT&G letters to the editors.

I think we’ve at last set the record straight that last year despite a record billion-dollar revenue surplus and denials to the contrary—there was what last April the Boston Herald aptly called "a tax increase by stealth."

Chip Ford—
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The Boston Globe
Wednesday, March 4, 1998

Letter to the Editor: Yes, there was a tax increase last year

In its Feb. 26 editorial, "Taxing common sense," the Globe calls the logic that I use to determine that there was a tax increase last year "Orwellian." Using this "Orwellian twist of logic," the Globe argues, a person could maintain that any state expenditure was a tax hike because the money could have instead been used for tax breaks.

But no one is taking that next step. Consider the vote taken by the Legislature last spring that changed the law that gives an income tax break, by way of an increase in the personal exemption, when the state stabilization fund is full. If that law had not been changed, Massachusetts taxpayers would have paid over $300 less in 1997 taxes. Instead, their personal exemption decreased, giving them a tax hike of more than $300 million more than they would have paid.

We can argue whether the money is better used by the state in a savings account that is not, incidentally, a true stabilization fund, but rather a slush fund for stashing money until legislators feel like spending it.

But there is no doubt that it was a tax increase, no matter how much the Orwellians on Beacon Hill try to say it’s a duck.

Barbara Anderson
Co-director, Citizens for Limited Taxation and Government
Boston

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