Taxes

Even considering how higher-income households have more money to give away, the tax benefits of charitable tax deductions are heavily skewed toward the top.

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.

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.

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.

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 ...