I’ll be quick with my column this week and keep it both brief and simple: smokers, drivers, and anybody involved with computer software services, prepare yourself to pay higher taxes and higher prices starting August 1.
On Wednesday the House of Representatives overrode Governor Patrick’s veto of a portion of the transportation financing plan that contained a provision that would have raised the gasoline tax even more than is already planned to make up for what the administration believes will be lost revenue should the tolls on the western part of the Massachusetts Turnpike come off. The Senate overrode the Governor’s veto on Thursday.
The Speaker of the House did a masterful job portraying his members as opponents of the Governor’s massive $1 billion tax hike. Instead, they just went along with a mere $500 million tax hike. My caucus took to the floor to urge our colleagues to sustain the Governor’s veto and go back to the drawing board and consider alternatives to the massive tax increases. I voted to sustain the Patrick veto.
The legislation that raised taxes on gasoline, cigarettes, and technology services was called bad for the middle class and was widely panned as a job destroyer for the technology and innovation industries of Massachusetts. It’s bad enough the bill hikes the gas tax when gas prices are already sky rocketing. What’s worse is the language indexes the gasoline tax to the Consumer Price Index so that the tax is likely to increase annually without the Legislature ever having to take any more difficult tax votes and being held accountable for the devastating impact to our economy.
One of my Republican colleagues this week reminded everyone that this indexing of the gas tax is tantamount to “taxation without representation” since the peoples’ representatives would no longer need to go on the record by casting tax votes yet the gas tax would still be going up.
I can’t state enough how negatively this will impact our constituents, especially those of us in western Massachusetts who have greater distances to travel and fewer public transportation options to take than our counterparts in the big cities of the Bay State. Economists reminded us that everything transported by car or truck would likely see prices go up because the higher gas taxes would be passed on to consumers of goods from food to clothes to electronic items and on and on.
The Democrat majority’s vote to raise taxes on every working family and to hit job creators with a tax widely panned as a job killer is a clear sign they are simply out of touch and would rather raise taxes than cut fraud and waste. My fellow Republicans and I offered a plan to meet the state’s transportation needs without raising taxes so it is disappointing that Democrats chose instead to hit up taxpayers yet again. We also repeatedly pointed out that the Commonwealth took in over $600 million more than it had predicted it would last fiscal year. We said that instead of raising taxes we should use that windfall for the budget and the important transportation infrastructure needs of our state.
The increase in the tax on technology services was criticized by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, which said “The tax takes clear aim at the state’s innovation economy, which is the essence of the state’s competitive edge and at the core of its economic future.” Despite that warning they voted for the higher taxes rather than voting to sustain Governor Patrick’s veto of the $500 million tax hike. Patrick had vetoed the legislation because he favored a $1 billion tax increase.
Finally, I will remind everyone that our state budget in this fiscal year 2014 is over $34 billion. It has gone up every year by nearly a billion dollars. And while some of the budget is non-discretionary that still leaves millions of dollars that the Governor and elected public officials could go through and re-prioritize just as you do with your home budgets while sitting around your kitchen tables paying your own bills and planning your own expenditures.
I’ve had many questions about whether Massachusetts will have a sales tax holiday this year as we have in the past. On Thursday, the Chairs of the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies polled members about releasing Senate Bill 175, An Act establishing a sales tax holiday in 2013, from the committee with a favorable report. As the Ranking Republican member of the Economic Development Committee I of course voted yes.
The weekend of August 10 and 11 would be designated as a Sales Tax Holiday weekend if the bill passes the House and Senate and is signed by the Governor. I suspect we will take it up next Tuesday or Wednesday. There is some speculation the Governor may play contrarian and veto it because of his new-found concerns that the Commonwealth can’t afford to give up the sales tax revenue it would lose over those two days. I refer readers back to the paragraph above where I stated that state revenues increased last fiscal year by more than $600 million over benchmark.
So, prepare for the tax increases but plan, as well, for the sales tax weekend.
Have a great week!
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not the staff, editor, or publisher of the Westfield News.
Representative Don Humason and his Chief of Staff Maura Cassin McCarthy may be reached at their Westfield District Office, 64 Noble Street, Westfield, MA 01085, (413) 568-1366.
Representative Don Humason may be reached at his Boston office, State House Room 542, Boston, MA 02133, (617) 722-2803.
Email address: [email protected]
Website: www.DonHumason.org
