More Broken Promises
The nightmare is already starting to begin, and Deval Patrick hasn’t even taken office yet.
Governor-elect Deval Patrick’s incoming budget chief says new taxes at the local level may be needed to create a stable long-term financial picture.
Leslie Kirwan says so-called local option taxes on meals, hotels and other services should be one of the things the state considers.
Oh, but wait! it gets worse…
She also isn’t sure the state can cut property taxes, as Patrick said he wanted to do during the campaign.
So let’s recap what’s happening right now.. During the campaign, Deval said he had no plans to raise taxes, and his new budget chief is already suggesting new taxes. Also during the campaign, Deval claimed he wanted to cut property taxes, but his new budget chief is already putting the breaks on that idea.
It’s never too early to say “we told you so.”
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TAGS: broken promises, budget, Deval Patrick, property taxes, Taxes.
Matt Margolis is co-author (with Mark Noonan) of Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority. He also blogs at The Buffalo Bean. Follow Matt on Twitter.
Why are we sending money to Boston and then asking for it back? Why don’t we skip that and not send it in the first place? Just wondering.
He said he was going to raise local option taxes before the election, nobody was listening.
http://eaboclipper.blogspot.com/2006/11/heres-one-new-deval-tax-expanded-meals.html
A tax on hotels affect tourists to the region more than affect you and me. If tourists use our infrastructure and adds wear and tear that we pay for, and we can recoup a marginally increased amount of that cost via a small tax on hotel fees and help reduce property taxes or the property tax rate or property tax assesments, doesn’t that make good financial sense for us? This is not a political issue. This is financial issue. Get it straight, please.
Kirwin says,
“I think that local option taxes should be one of the things that we consider in empowering communities to have more independence and flexibility in their own budgeting, in their own financial situation.”
You assume that these are in addition to, rather than in place of, increases in local aid. The mightmare for towns has been that after decades of receiving steady (or growing) amounts of local aid, when the state revenues turned down and local aid diminished substantially, they had to figure out how to run their towns with dramatically less money. There is much to advocate in enabling towns to construct and manage their own revenue stream without dependence on the state.
The hotel tax isn’t as simple as that, abe. We compete against other major tourist destinations for a great bulk of our hotel business. The room rate, including local taxes, is a critical factor. We want to fill the convention center, we nee dto keep the room cost as competitive as we can. It’s already too high now.
The local option will probably pass now, simply because there’s no one left in Government to oppose it. What a shame.
This is not a tax on tourism.
Massachusetts has very little tourism. Most tourism in New England is in NH, ME and VT.
Its really a tax on business. Much business involves travelling from site to site. Many, many short trips are involved.
Local option taxes are really just adding to the cost of doing business in Massachusetts… driving more away.
Maybe the businesses will move to where all the workers are going…
Abe:
One would think that after 200 years of capitalism and the strongest economy in the world the correlation between low taxes and “financial sense” is obvious. In other words, if you want to stagnate the tourism industry the surest way is thru taxation. Let‚Äôs face it, all taxes don‚Äôt make ‚Äúfinancial sense‚Äù and accordingly, if you want to lower property taxes, CUT SPENDING.
If capitalism is too difficult a concept for you I would suggest following the old saying “don’t bite the hand that feeds you”.