<p>New programs = historical legacy. Funding existing programs = not so much.</p>
<p>I think about moving to MA from time to time. Raising taxes is not a motivator. If they go through, I expect more MA exiles in my area. Maybe whole companies too.</p>
<p>I don’t know a lot of people who will move <em>just</em> for lower taxes. I think people tend to be loyal to the places they are familiar with. If you are from a plains state, you will probably find Nebraska appealing. If you grew up with tight rolling hills, old towns and lots of trees, you will probably prefer the Northeast or parts of the Upper Midwest.</p>
<p>Just today I talked with a friend who moved to Hawaii last year with her husband. Although they love the beauty and the weather and the culture, they are already itching to get back to Wisconsin. They are missing pretty much everything they wanted to get away from. :)</p>
<p>NH had a ton of MA residents move in for lower taxes, cheaper housing and pretty good schools in the 1980s, 1990s and the early 2000s. Many companies moved into the state too, some from MA. There was a problem too, with MA residents registering their cars in NH to get lower insurance rates. One of my relatives got caught doing this - the fine was a few thousand - courts are not amused by this sort of thing.</p>
<p>Though I believe in taxes=good schools and services, Sally, I’m one that very easily may leave WI due to tax rates. Not income, but property. It may make the difference between a comfortable, travel filled retirement and one close to the bone. With sufficient resources it doesn’t matter as much. My retired friends aren’t moving, but they sure are turning into snowbirds. I like WI, but my heart is in many places. </p>
<p>Car registration is one of those hidden fees that gets you in low tax states. Sometimes a shocker.</p>
<p>Hmm… Which to choose? Massachusetts one of the top 10 liberal states or Nebraska one of the top 10 conservative states…</p>
<p>I’m going to take a controversial position: You get what you pay for.</p>
<p>If you want to live in a society that has arts, good educational resources, an interesting variety of people and approaches to life, breathable air and drinkable water - you have to pay taxes. Somebody has to drive the buses, trolleys and subway trains, referee the inevitable disputes, keep businesses from boosting the bottom line by dumping their effluent in the common air and water, etc. All that costs money.</p>
<p>It’s easy to convince yourself that you’re a victim - you’re paying more than your fair share and others - poor people, politicians, outsiders, whatever, are taking advantage of you. And there will be evidence that you’re right. There have always been grifters. Every large budget always has inefficiencies - and government budgets are large. But unless you’re in the exceptional situation (Bell, California) the inefficiencies and unfairnesses of the government you pay for with your taxes are probably not significant.</p>
<p>In my small affluent community the councilmembers are paid something like $200 a month. I think that’s wrong. You get what you pay for. I know these folks and have no doubt that none are “on the take” (I can’t even imagine who they would be “on the take” from) but it’s still wrong. If you want people to work for you you should pay them a fair wage for their work - not more, not less.</p>
<p>I know my personal take on the moral dictates of a being modern American aren’t real popular these days. But those are the standards I view the world with.</p>
<p>Kluge, great statement on the value of government. Totally agree. But yes, some morals associated with the task are of value.</p>
<p>I’ve enjoyed reading the posts … all 88 of 'em. One of the wonderful things about America is mobility. Another is that you can find interesting people everywhere … not just in Austin and Greenwich Village. (jk!) </p>
<p>I have friends in most parts of the Continental US. Each is more comfortable in some parts of the country than in others. As for myself, I find small town charm and cornfields very appealing … except in winter when harvested fields and leafless trees seem pretty desolate (to me). Put another way, some people think of Omaha as being a large city, and some people don’t. Neither is really wrong in his/her personal assessment.</p>
<p>The actual tax proposal is interesting and not something which can be summarized as “tax increase”. </p>
<p>A partial outline is:</p>
<ol>
<li>Decrease sales tax to 4.5% from 6.25% (plus local additions). Good for lower and middle income people. Business likes this too.</li>
<li>Personal exemption doubles to $8800. This reduces taxes for lower and middle earners. </li>
<li>Increase tax rate to 6.25%. The tax rate is now 5.25% but it was 5.95% recently. </li>
</ol>
<p>So the increase is progressive but maybe not progressive enough; the full bite starts to become important at about $102k taxable income a year. MA taxable income is figured a little differently than US taxable income so I can’t say what that is as gross income. I would imagine one change, assuming this moves forward, would be to make the bite hit at a higher number. Why? Because personal income in MA is high so this would affect a lot of people and that mean resistance. For incomes below $102k and above $37.5, you’re talking $100 to $400 total increase. It goes to $3200 on the higher incomes, which is why I can see that line moving up.</p>
<p>FYI, MA has per person income in the high $30’s, which is 3rd highest. You can see how this becomes $100k per family. </p>
<p>Putting aside the nonsense about Nebraska versus MA, I hear hilarious non-sequiturs about the state. For example, I’ve been told many times that our high taxes - which are by some measures below average and some just above average - drive out the wealthy. I’ve then been told that our income is so high because we’ve driven out the poor people, partly with high house prices. Can’t square those and the funny thing is when they come from the same person in consecutive conversations. People have this great ability to respond to each point as though it is independent and can be considered (and rejected) without reference to any other point or answer. That amuses me no end. I love that kind of cognitive dissonance. </p>
<p>As to region, I grew up in Michigan. I spent summers on a farm. I even showed sheep in the Armada County fair. Much of my family lives in the southeast so I’m very familiar with those areas as well. New England is vastly different in ways other regions can’t comprehend. One issue is distance: in an hour I’m 2 states away and in a completely rural area with goats. Another issue is variety of landscape within a small area. The non-geographical reasons are really interesting. First, NE is old, which means everyplace has been a place for a very long time. One issue we’ve faced in development is every small town, including ones in the middle of nowhere (then take a left and keep going) are fully zoned, owned for hundreds of years, and thus highly limited by the old pattern as to what new can be done. Another issue is basic land use changed here a long time ago. 100 years ago, almost all non-urban MA was farmland. But farms here became unproductive back then and the land reverted. We have about 70% tree cover now versus maybe 10% - that’s an actual estimate - from 1900 and that counts urban growth. That means the land simply looks older and leafier because it wasn’t economic for it to remain farmland even as farms thrived in the midwest. Why? Because plots were small, partly because of the landscape but just as much or more because the plots were all owned for 200 years and so assembly of large farms was not only difficult but usually impossible. The farm I spent summers on in MI was based on a section, meaning 640 acres or a square mile. Not really possible in MA because of the history baked into the deeds. </p>
<p>You do of course see land use changes in places like MI. Logging removed the old growth while now the forests are back in sections of MI much of the land remains cleared for farming - and for sprawling growth. Look back into the land history and you see big owners controlled big areas. Totally unlike MA. Here the idea is that deed records become iffier the farther south you go until you reach Cape Cod where they become guesses. You’d be amazed to look at property here and find possible easements relating to cart tracks from 200 years ago or older. Or old claims to dig sand and access rights to water and so on. Stuff that really isn’t a problem elsewhere. </p>
<p>All this means you can leave Boston and in a few minutes you can be in a suburb which has many rural characteristics because its land use is so restricted by the past. A place like Dover, which is very rich and lies almost next to the inner ring highway of 128, is really the country but it’s a few minutes to office park land and malls. Even my town of Brookline, which is a peninsula sticking into Boston and which fought off annexation 5 times in the 19thC, has a huge farm. Allandale Farm - which is partly in Boston - is over 250 years old and it’s not the oldest farm in the state. That might be Appleton Farms in Ipswich. Ipswich, which is ridiculously pretty, is now mostly known as the home of the fried clam (see Woodman’s, the Clam Box, etc.), a thing I can do without.</p>
<p>Yikes…guess we will have to drive to New Jersey to get cheaper gas :)</p>
<p>I lived (free and didn’t die) in New Hampshire for a number of years. I liked it, but I won’t be returning there in my golden years!</p>
<p>kluge-I agree. Having lived in a low tax state and a high tax state, I’ll take the high tax state any day. It isn’t even just schools, but all services that suffer from low taxes.</p>
<p>I appreciate what I get for my high taxes and wouldn’t want to live in a place that offered less.</p>
<p>I bet most people would worry less about high taxes if they also enjoyed rising wages to offset them. Income stagnation over the past few decades is the real problem, in my opinion. The cost of everything keeps going up, but for many, income is the same or lower as it was a decade or more ago.</p>
<p>Cracks me up. </p>
<p>People complain about living in high tax states while paying 2 to 10 times more for equivalent housing. </p>
<p>In California, in a decent to great area, you can pay $300 to over $1,000 a sq ft for a home? How much is a home in NH? I am using NH as an example because BCEagle91 is going to know the answer to that question.</p>
<p>I don’t like funding education solely with a property tax because a property tax has ability to pay issues. Most people’s incomes peak in
their 50’s. If
property tax is based on what your neighbor pays for a home and not
what you paid for a home, you can have many people forced to move out of their homes and out of their communites. I dislike that. A lot of people agree with me which is one reason prop 13 passed. Also, as
Lergnom said, you can’t look at one tax in a vacuum. Hey. That tax is
low. Let’s raise it.</p>
<p>California has low property tax rates. For people who have lived in their homes for a long time, property taxes might be low, but because of
other taxes, California is a high tax state. California gets its money from other sources.</p>
<p>One reason I like the income tax is there is an ability to pay element with income taxes. You make more money, you pay more in taxes. If you don’t make more money, you pay less. That makes sense to me. There
is the argument that higher income taxes cause people to work less. The problem with that argument is, in aggregate, there is no proof of that. History says otherwise. </p>
<p>Do people in Massachusettes work less than people in NH? Than in Nebraska?</p>
<p>Just because Deval proposes something doesn’t mean it’s gonna happen…</p>
<p>MA schools are not in trouble. MA schools in poor urban areas are in trouble. All the $$ in the world isn’t going to help these schools as their problems are society’s problems.</p>
<p>I read somewhere that if MA was a country its schools would be in the top 5 world wide, much higher then US schools as a whole.</p>
<p>Speaking of the rich waiting to pay increased taxes, apparently John Kerry’s yacht is still moored in Newport, Rhode Island.</p>
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<p>I like low taxes, little traffic, great roads, great shopping, easy access to the mountains and beaches and the level of services that my local government provides. I like the town council form of government because you have input into what goes on in town if you want it and it’s fairly easy to get the real information about what is going on - not what you get from the papers.</p>
<p>If I want additional services, I pay for them.</p>
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<p>Clearly a problem when you have employment and wages by fiat where the
people that pay for those wages have declining wages in real terms.</p>
<p>And then there’s stuff like this:</p>
<p>“The Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in the U.S. and was plagued by escalating costs, scheduling overruns, leaks, design flaws, charges of poor execution and use of substandard materials, criminal arrests,[2][3] and even one death.[4] The project was scheduled to be completed in 1998[5] at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006).[6] The project was not completed, however, until December 2007, at a cost of over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars)[6] as of 2006.[7] The Boston Globe estimated that the project will ultimately cost $22 billion, including interest, and that it will not be paid off until 2038.[8] As a result of the deaths, leaks, and other design flaws, the consortium that oversaw the project agreed to pay $407 million in restitution, and several smaller companies agreed to pay a combined sum of approximately $51 million.[9]”</p>
<p>– Wikipedia</p>
<p>Where US and State taxpayers were royally taken for a ride. The Big Dig has drained a lot of transportation resources from the rest of the state which is why a lot of the transportation infrastructure in the rest of the state is in such poor shape.</p>
<p>The MBTA (and MWRA, MassPort, Turnpike Authority) have been dumping grounds for retiring politicians, spouses and relatives for decades. This is business as usual in MA.</p>
<p>Is this where you want your taxes going?</p>
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<p>Live well under your means and this isn’t a problem.</p>
<p>I frequently work on optimizing costs as would any responsible manager
of a household, business or government.</p>
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<p>The price of housing varies widely in New Hampshire but in my town, you can find something adequate for a bit over $100/sq ft in my town. Here’s a 3/1, 1,356 sq ft, 6,970 sq ft lot for $105,000. $77/sq ft. This is in one of the worst school districts in the state.</p>
<p>[125</a> Charlestown Rd Claremont NH - Home For Sale and Real Estate Listing - MLS #4202950 - Realtor.com](<a href=“125 Charlestown Rd, Claremont, NH 03743 | realtor.com®”>125 Charlestown Rd, Claremont, NH 03743 | realtor.com®)</p>
<p>In one of the best school districts in the state, you can get a 4/3, 2,678 sq ft, 2.01 acres, for $447,000. $167/sq ft.</p>
<p>[2</a> Sherwood Dr Hollis NH - Home For Sale and Real Estate Listing - MLS #71455321 - Realtor.com](<a href=“http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/2-Sherwood-Dr_Hollis_NH_03049_M47728-68890?source=web&ex=BSMA_71455321]2”>http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/2-Sherwood-Dr_Hollis_NH_03049_M47728-68890?source=web&ex=BSMA_71455321)</p>
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<p>For some reason, most people like to buy homes to their income capacity or even more. At least before and during the bubble. I guess most people buying property were either optimistic or gamblers. So I think that there is some correlation between ability to pay and taxes paid. But then there are some like me that buy far less than what we could afford.</p>
<p>My mother lives in the home that she bought about 45 years ago. I think that she will live there until she dies. It’s a place with great schools, great public transportation, decent roads, and pretty good services within walking distance. She has two pensions, social security, lots of dividend stocks and some bonds and she lives in a frugal manner. She could always ask her kids for help but I think that she’s too proud to do that. She planned well-ahead for her retirement. Her vacuum cleaner, which weighs a ton, is the same one that she used 45 years ago. She has the proverbial ball of string and ball of rubber bands.</p>
<p>People are forced to move or change their living arrangements all the time. Could be a job change, taxes going up, increased crime in an area, moving to live closer to other relatives, divorce, marriage, etc. I certainly don’t plan to live where I am now when I retire.</p>
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<p>MA has low property tax rates from the NH perspective but a lot of MA residents complain about their rates as being high. They get to vote on the locally, so I don’t know what the complaints are about.</p>
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<p>I do not know about that argument. I am sure that it affects some people. My wife never worked outside the home after getting married. We discuss it from time to time but there’s no financial need to do it and it might actually result in less net benefit to the household - of course there’s the fun-factor of working if you find the right job.</p>
<p>For many, you work more in a high-tax environment so that you can survive. For those that are comfortable, you might work less or not have dual income households.</p>
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<p>That’s a pretty hard question to answer as the answer would involve piecewise work.</p>
<p>MA has far more generous social service benefits so you could hang out on social supports more comfortably than you could in NH. I see people in MA with dual-income households, sometimes with each earner with 1.5 to 2 jobs to make ends meet. A lot of the people that I work with have single-income households. I don’t know if that’s because housing costs less up here and overall costs are less up here or if that’s a choice that those in MA make to have more income. I do know that there are a ton of MA residents that come up to NH to shop. The lack of MA malls near the MA/NH border, at least in the Merrimack Valley attest to the competitive disadvantage of the sales tax differential.</p>
<p>Ability to work is another issue. Traffic in the Boston area going out about 25 miles is usually horrible during commute times. Traffic is a lot easier in NH. It may be that one could be more productive in NH than in MA and get the same amount of work done with less overall time because of commuting issues.</p>
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<p>I think that some expansion of school choice and charters would help those that wanted to make the efforts to dig out of poor school districts.</p>
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<p>The recent TIMSS study results support this for math and science. I think that it is generally true. It certainly isn’t perfect though. I’ve seen some really horrible math skills in MA high-school grads that passed the MCAS tests.</p>
<p>
I don’t understand how you can say this. It is a net of $2 billion in new tax revenue, which %age-wise is about a 10% increase in tax revenue.</p>
<p>No one is asking for some of the stuff DeVal is proposing. No one cares about having trains going from NYC to Pittsfield. People on the South Shore will fight commuter rail with their dying breath (NIMBY!), and you know the final price will be 5x what they are claiming now (see: Big Dig).</p>
<p>MA already collects $1 billion in taxes per year dedicated to transportation. Maybe if the state stopped letting MBTA employees retire at 45 with a full pension, it would free up some money for other things.</p>
<p>
Where did you get this number?</p>
<p>MA has one of the flattest income taxes around. After a few deductions that add up to $15-20K for a typical married couple with kids, everyone pays the same flat rate on earned income. After that, the income tax increase hits every dollar. Most people earn much more than they spend on sales-taxable items.</p>
<p>The real issue isn’t so much the taxes, anyway. It’s the complete lack of faith in the state gov’t to actually get anything accomplished on-budget and without a huge expansion in the size of the bureaucracy.</p>
<p>MADad–MA and MN schools both scored very high on the international math and science study released lately. MA scored higher in math and MN higher in science (6 and 8th I think for math and 2nd and 6th for science MA/MN). No, as a whole, neither state has issues with schools, but they are 7th and 8th for the highest taxed states too with MN being 7and MA being 8th.</p>
<p>I find it interesting that these international studies never seem to consider the humanities courses though.</p>
<p>BCEagle91, I am sure there are anecdotes and “some people” change their work habits based on taxes, but overall…the economy does not do worse when taxes are higher. That is the history. Some people work less, but others pick up the slack.</p>
<p>Those homes would cost a little bit more where I live. Homes on two acres are kind of rare, but even if that more expensive home was on a 1/4 acre, that home would cost well over $1 million here.</p>
<p>The prop tax on 1 million would be about 12500, buy we have a cap gains tax that can run 9 to 13 percent. </p>
<p>And yet, Silicon Valley, despite these high cap gains rates, and they are extremely high, I think too high, is located in California. Now the cap rates have just gone up so we can all see if there is an effect in the future.</p>
<p>Calif is close to a balanced budget. Unthinkable a couple of years ago.</p>
<p>We in texas drive on dirt roads with our pickup trucks and educate our kids in our backyards. </p>
<p>No income taxes have consequences (tongue in cheek). :D</p>