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Testimony to the Joint Committee on Revenue on the Governor’s Tax Proposals
Testimony presented to the Joint Committee on Revenue on March 28, 2023, regarding Governor Healey’s tax proposals.
Taking Measure of the Governor’s Tax Plan
The Governor’s proposal would provide benefits to households across the income spectrum, but by far the largest benefits would accrue to a small number of very wealthy families.
Governor’s Estate Tax Plan Is Costly and Gives Biggest Breaks to Largest Estates – Better Options Exist
During the current legislative session, lawmakers will consider a number of proposals for changing the Massachusetts estate tax. Two proposals are compared here – one put forward by Governor Healey (H.42), and another, S.1784/H.2960, offered in the Senate and House.
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A Credit to Health: The Health Effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit
The opportunity to live a healthy life begins long before a person shows up at the doctor’s office or hospital; health begins where people live, learn, work, and play. There is growing recognition that greater attention to the social determinants of health – things like having stable housing, safe, walkable neighborhoods with accessible transportation, grocery stores with affordable, nutritious options, schools that are equipped to provide high-quality education, and incomes that enable families to make ends meet – is critical to making meaningful improvements to health. This paper briefly examines the health impact of one program that provides economic support for low-income working families: the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
Time to Care: The Health Effects of Paid Family & Medical Leave
In healthy communities, children are more likely to be born healthy and can grow up to be healthy adults. When people are healthy they are better able to reach their full potential and make lasting contributions to society. Health is influenced by a variety of complex factors, such as where one lives, access to healthy foods, and affordability of health care. Policies that address the ability of workers to care for family members, like Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML), can also shape and influence health.
What Has Happened in Other States with High Tax Rates on Million-Dollar Incomes?
Massachusetts can have an economy that generates broad prosperity and home-grown millionaires with world-class education and infrastructure. Several other states have top income-tax rates as high, or substantially higher, than what is proposed in Massachusetts. Those states do not have fewer millionaires, and have not seen less growth in their share of millionaires over time.
Educated and Encumbered: Student Debt Rising with Higher Education Funding Falling in Massachusetts
Organized as a series of charts, this paper details major trends since Fiscal Year 2001 in state support for our public colleges and universities in Massachusetts, and how those changes have led to sharply increasing costs for students and families, which they pay for with increasing amounts of debt. On several measures we compare Massachusetts to other states.
Analyzing the Governor’s Budget for FY 2019
The Governor’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 budget proposal level funds much of state government, includes some targeted initiatives – including an expanded earned income tax credit (EITC) and new services for people struggling with and recovering from mental illness – and proposes small reductions in funding, after accounting for inflation, for higher education and other areas.
Frequently Asked Questions Related to the $15 Minimum Wage
This brief discusses commonly asked questions surrounding a $15 minimum wage in Massachusetts.
What Does the Federal Tax Law Mean for Massachusetts and How Might the Commonwealth Respond?
The new federal tax law reduces federal revenues by approximately $1.5 trillion largely by cutting taxes for corporations, people receiving inheritance from very large estates, and high-income owners of pass-through entities such as partnerships. The law provides reduced tax rates and relatively smaller tax reductions to most wage and salary earners while disproportionately benefiting those with high incomes. This paper examines the distribution of tax cuts, the impact of how they may be paid for, how the law interacts with Massachusetts policies, and what the Commonwealth could do to take its own direction different from the federal government.
The Evidence on Millionaire Migration and Taxes
This policy brief examines the evidence on the likely migration effects of raising income taxes on households with taxable annual income above $1 million and the impacts on net state revenue.
Funding Improvements for Schools, Roads, and Public Transit with Tax Reforms that Improve Fairness
A ballot question has been proposed that would support investments in education and transportation with revenue from an additional 4% tax on income over a million dollars a year. This factsheet examines this proposal and how it relates to longer term economic and policy trends in Massachusetts.
Sweeter than SALT: Highest-Income Households Get Federal Tax Cuts More Than Twice SALT Losses
The federal government has enacted very large tax cuts targeted mostly at higher-income taxpayers. The resulting loss of an almost $1.5 trillion in federal revenue is likely to lead to cuts in federal support for programs that are important to people in Massachusetts and to the state budget. Amid these deep tax cuts, a new federal limit on the deductibility of state and local taxes (SALT) has received a lot of attention. Households that itemize deductions and pay over $10,000 in combined state and local taxes will no longer be able to deduct more than this amount when calculating their taxable income for federal taxes.
