<p>"According to Boston.com, Patrick listed possible revenue sources including:</p>
<p>Raising the gas tax from 21 cents to 51 cents per gallon
Raising the sales tax from 6.25 percent to 7.75 percent
Raising the state income tax to 5.66 percent from 5.25 percent
Levying a vehicle miles-traveled tax at 2.4 cents per mile
New, emissions-based vehicle title and registration fees could raise $175 million
A payroll tax on workers in regions with transit service could raise $140 million to $207 million"</p>
<p>"(Reuters) - Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman on Tuesday became the second Republican governor in the last week to propose ending his state’s income tax, saying he wants to make Nebraska more competitive with its neighbors by eliminating the tax on both individuals and corporations.</p>
<p>Heineman said that if a complete elimination of the two taxes could not be passed, he would push to lower rates on both individuals and corporations. He promised to make up the lost revenue by reducing business exemptions to the sales tax.</p>
<p>Last week, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said he wanted to eliminate all personal and corporate income taxes in his state. Louisiana’s personal income tax rate is 3.9 percent.</p>
<p>Nebraska’s personal income tax rate is 6.84 percent, higher than every one of its neighbors – Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado and Wyoming – according to a table accompanying Heineman’s remarks."</p>
<p>If you already work in Boston or the Merrimack Valley, you could keep your job, buy a cheaper home and pay less in taxes though you might have a longer commute and a school district that isn’t as good.</p>
<p>If you compare MA to IL, NY, CA, MA’s taxes are a lot lower so perhaps Patrick feels that this is the time to raise rates. The economy in MA is decent too. I don’t hear a lot of complaints on these proposed increases yet.</p>
<p>BCEagle91–not really. MA’s overall tax percent is 10.4, 8th highest in the country, CA is 11.2, 4th highest, IL is 10.2, 11th highest. NH is 8.1 and 44th overall. Nebraska is 9.7 and 21st.</p>
<p>What NH gives you is the ability to choose what you pay in taxes. NH doesn’t have general income and sales taxes so the property tax rate is high. So you can choose what you pay in state taxes by choosing the type of property that you live in. You’d pay the same overall tax for the same property whether you made $50,000 or $1,000,000.</p>
<p>Of course many like to buy as much house and property as they can afford and they’ll pay a higher effective rate.</p>
<p>One other thing about your link: if you take NH taxes and divide by income, you get 4.8%. It’s only when you add MA taxes that the rate goes way up. About 32% of NH resident taxes are paid to other states (mainly MA) as there are many in Southern NH that work in MA. Many MA residents moved to NH in the 80s and 90s for cheaper real estate and lower taxes - of course if they still worked in MA, then they would have to pay MA income taxes.</p>
<p>I was thinking of Chicago and NYC for those states and CA but didn’t want to mix and match. Chicago is 9+% for sales taxes. NYC is 8%. CA is 7.5%. MA is 6.25%. On income taxes, MA is 5.3%, IL is 5% (don’t know if there is a local income tax there), CA is 1-9.3%, NY is 4-8.2%.</p>
<p>I moved from MA to NH back in the 1980s. It felt like I got a 50% pay raise at the time.</p>
<p>We drive the 6 miles from Connecticut to Massachusetts to get gas because it is on average 20-30 cents cheaper per gallon than Connecticut. We spend $ in Mass while we are there. Connecticut has one of the highest gas taxes , we will have no where to turn!</p>
<p>My sister’s husband was offered a excellent job in Omaha so they went out to see it and said, thanks, but no thanks. She did like the idea of being able to buy a mansion for a quarter of the price of her wee home in Westchester, but that was about all she liked. </p>
<p>Personally, I think taxes are a good thing and I don’t get all the whining people do about paying them.</p>
<p>Well some of us think we can do the best job of spending the money we earn, Emily, and some of us think those in power have no respect for the fact that others actually earn the money they spend and bestow with such little care. Especially in the God-forsaken city of New York. It is ludicrous to say that taxes are good. The money raised can be used for good things. Or bad things. But taxation is morally neutral. When half of one’s income is taken by various governmental entities, personal freedom has been compromised, which is a bad thing. Personally, I don’t get the spineless, thoughtless sheeple thing. Representative government should always involve accountability.</p>
<p>I keep reading about their disdain for those who have a problem with tax increases…ugh
I am from Mass originally and hope to move back again someday , but other than property taxes , everything is more expensive than NJ</p>
<p>Without getting into whether taxes are bad or good, you also have to be careful of those talking about abolishing taxes, getting rid if income taxes and so forth, because before cheering it on, ask yourself the potential cost, or where the missing revenue comes from. Some states that cut income taxes, for example, make it up with new excise fees (not taxes, mind you) on things like cable tv bills, phone bills and so forth, or in sales taxes, hidden or out there…which ends up being worse, because those taxes are regressive, they hit lower wage earners more than high wage ones. </p>
<p>More importantly, you get what you pay for, many of the low or no income tax states show that in that they also generally have schools that are near the bottom of the barrel in education (put it this way, if you asked someone to name a high achieving state educationally, few would say Louisiana). The other factor is that the low tax states often get a lot more money from the federal government then they pay in, so, for example, some of the states that proclaim they are ‘low tax’ states, get 25% of their education funding from the feds (the national average is about 9%) and their state gets back 2 bucks for every buck they put in, where ‘high tax’ states often get back a lot less then they paid in. </p>
<p>I don’t think new taxes are a good thing and I certainly don’t like the idea of having to pay them, but the answer to such proposals in my mind is what is it being used for, why do you have to raise these taxes…the cut taxes and cause an economic windfall that will pay for the cuts has been shown to be for the most part myth, so if we are going to cut taxes, what will be cut in spending to balance that, and how will that affect the quality of life? If cutting taxes means having schools with 50 kids in a classroom being taught by second rate teachers using 20 year old textbooks, isn’t worth it, if it means not fixing roads and bridges, if it means in 20 years the highways and roads are practically falling apart, not worth it.</p>
<p>Most low tax areas have low COL and can run as good or better public services much cheaper because they don’t have top pay public employees and arm and a leg–and they (PEs) can still live well on that lower amount due to the low COL. My low COL town has better public services and roads than most parts of NJ at a fraction of the cost.</p>
And are we talking about Omaha or Kearney?</p>