Transportation
ALL TRANSPORTATION REPORTS
Your Fair Share Dollars at Work: Critical Investments and Hard Choices
The Fair Share Amendment is doing what voters wanted it to do: making new, important investments in our Commonwealth and making our tax system more equitable.
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How Will We Spend Fair Share Dollars? Competing Proposals Highlight Needs and Opportunities
Fiscal Year 2024, which starts in July 2023, is the first state budget to include Fair Share dollars, and the Governor's, House, and Senate budget proposals differ in how they would spend Fair Share funds. How do their priorities compare?
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Preventing High-Income Tax Avoidance to Protect Education and Transportation
Problems with potential high-income tax avoidance can be solved by following many other states that require that taxpayers file their state income taxes with the same status they use on their federal taxes.
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Memo to Governor Healey on Ways to Ensure Effective Implementation of the Fair Share Amendment
As Massachusetts voters have amended the state constitution to include a 4 percent surtax on taxable income over $1 million, MassBudget would like to offer policy suggestions to assist the Commonwealth in protecting this revenue and ensuring that it is directed to education and transportation, as specified in the amendment.
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A Bridge Too Far: Sagging Investment Leaves 644 Massachusetts Bridges Structurally Deficient
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation maintains a database tracking 7,880 bridges across the Commonwealth. This paper examines the condition of these bridges and the impact of bridge disrepair on communities. It analyzes how some regions and populations are harmed more than others, and how these problems could be helped by investing more public resources in transportation.
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Brief for Amicus Curiae on the Gig Worker Ballot Question
MassBudget's brief to Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court asking to dismiss the ballot question exempting gig companies from providing employee benefits and protections. The brief outlined how excluding these workers from labor protections and failure to contribute to social insurance funds for them would hurt these workers and more broadly erode labor protections and employment-based social supports across the Commonwealth.
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PREGUNTAS FRECUENTES: la Enmienda de Parte Justa (Impuesto a los millonarios)
¿Busca información más detallada sobre la Enmienda de Parte Justa que se está debatiendo aquí en la Commonwealth? Consulte nuestra guía para responder a algunas de las preguntas más comunes sobre este tema y obtenga más información.
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Investing in Transportation Can Help Massachusetts
This one-page summary of a longer report outlines how Massachusetts has underinvested in its transportation infrastructure, and greater investment can improve the economy, equity, and the environment.
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Earth Day is a Time to Consider Better Responses to High Gas Prices: Free Public Transit and Other Ideas
Higher gas prices are causing anxiety for many and are eating away at the meager incomes of low- and moderate-income families. Politicians are promoting a number of ideas to provide consumers with some relief. A very popular idea—a gas tax holiday—is a bad idea.
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Testimony on Employment Classification for App-Based Drivers
MassBudget stands in opposition to House bill (H.4375/H.4376), An Act defining and regulating the contract-based relationship between network companies and app-based drivers.
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The Three E’s: Greater Transportation Funding Can Improve the Economy, Equity, and Environment
New sustaining revenue is needed for Massachusetts' transportation systems, and no source of new funding is better scaled to meet the size of underinvestment than the Fair Share Amendment.
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FAQ: Fair Share Amendment Edition
Looking for more detailed information on the Fair Share Amendment being discussed here in the Commonwealth? Check out our guide to some common questions about it and learn more! Haga clica aquí para leer en español. 1. What is the Fair Share Amendment or “millionaire tax”? The Fair Share Amendment will be on the ballot in Massachusetts on November 8, 2022. It would amend the state constitution to allow for an additional 4% income tax on the portion of a tax filer’s taxable income that is above $1 million. The money raised by this tax must be used to support ...
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Testimony to end tax subsidies for purchasing private jets and other aircraft
To the Joint Committee on Revenue December 14, 2021 RE: Testimony in support of An Act Relevant to the Repeal of the Sales Tax Exemption for Aircraft (H.2923/S.1797). Chairman Hinds, Chairman Cusack, and distinguished members of the Joint Committee on Revenue: Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony on behalf of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (“MassBudget”), in support of H.2923/S.1797: An Act Relevant to the Repeal of the Sales Tax Exemption for Aircraft. The bill would end the current sales and use tax exemptions for aircraft and aircraft parts. These exemptions are economically regressive, fiscally costly, and ...
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New Federal Spending Makes It Crucial to Add State Funds for Education and Transportation
The federal and state governments act as partners to ensure high-quality education and transportation. In response to the COVID pandemic, the federal government has made available billions of one-time dollars for the Commonwealth. Federal funding for transportation and education from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), from other relief bills passed by Congress during the pandemic, and enhanced funding opportunities in the newly signed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF) are important but insufficient sources of revenue for the Commonwealth to move beyond the pandemic to a future with equity at its center. ...
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Federal Relief and Recovery Funding and Massachusetts’ Transportation Future
Unprecedented Needs and Opportunity Families and businesses rely on transportation systems like roads, sidewalks, buses, and trains for almost everything we do. These are the ways we get to work, to school, to the store, and how goods get to market. Transportation systems connect us to opportunity, save time and help Massachusetts achieve our commitment to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The COVID-19 pandemic has created new challenges for everyone, especially for people of color and those with lower incomes. While the pandemic has reduced travel for some, traffic has generally returned to unacceptable pre-COVID levels. U.S. News and World ...
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