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Go buy lots of stuff now
By adamg on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 5:03pm
Because the sales tax goes up to 6.25% on Aug. 1. Also, aid to cities and towns goes down.
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Comments
I wonder if they will still
I wonder if they will still have the August sales tax holiday/holiday weekend immediatly after the tax goes up?
Welcome to NH!
Tax free shopping on your left, booze on your right. Thanks for coming!
Tourism
Do we know whether this will discourage any tourists from visiting Boston or affect how much they (minus tax) spend while here?
6.5% Isn't That High
I'm usually shocked when I pay sales tax in other states that have sales tax ... and this isn't much higher than many tourists pay at home. There is the added feature that the city and county don't generally get to add some onto it like they do in California and other states.
Wikipedia gives a recent run down, although some of these states might have changed their rates, too. Looks like MA comes in at the middle, even at 6.5%.
Washington State can go as high as 15% with the local add on rate! Wowzers!
Yeah but we also have taxes
Yeah but we also have taxes on everything, that was always the point with Massachusetts. We have every tax option operating at the same time, but none of them are the highest in the country. Its a good system, but it does make our tax rate for any one thing look low when compared to other states that depend on that particular tax for the bulk of its tax intake.
15 percent, jeez. I wonder how much people buy from the internet in Washington state. Thats a pretty big pile of change.
Mass in the Middle of the Mass
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sl_burden_massa...
In 1977, Massachusetts had the 6th highest tax burden in the US. In 1980, MA was 2nd. Taxachusetts indeed.
HOWEVER, by 2000, MA was 27th and in 2007, 23rd.
Not sure how the sales tax change will change this, given the exemptions to the tax and other states raising their taxes, too. I doubt it will move our ranking much.
Percent or dollars
Swirly - is that measured in percent of income or in dollars. We are about 5th in the country in income - so if measured in percent - that's a lot of dollars spent on government. On this one I'm more concerned about actual expenditures.
True
But at least it gives us some hard numbers for comparison purposes.
If you click the link and substitute 'newyork' or 'newjersey' for 'massachusetts' in the link, it gets shocking on both counts - highest percentage of income going to taxes, and likely the highest amount of money too!
HOWEVER, one has to consider that the high cost of living around here and the cost of transport also pushes up the cost of government services proportionally. People who work for the government have to make enough to live here, it costs more to bring in things like building materials, supplies, etc. It would be folly to cite the total cost of a service in Montana and say that MA should spend that much.
That's why the percentage is a good metric: the absolute cost of services is confounded by local factors that affect both personal income and cost of services. Percentage of income inherently adjusts for the costs of living in an area, albeit crudely.
Vicious Spiral
Funny you mention NJ - I notice that they just passed a state budget that's about 10% higher than ours - with 40% more people - and knowing a few people who live in NJ - they are somewhere between MA and CA on the way to bankruptcy. NY is probably somewhere between NJ and CA on that scale.
From what I can see the principal driver of cost around here is real estate (residential and commercial) - but when 10% of people work in some form of government service and you pay them more and more money - it's a self fulfilling prophecy that you will drive up the price of real estate-especially residential which tends to be correlated to income not any intrinsic value. Unfortunately what eventually happens is you drive out residents and businesses and you end up being Detroit or Cleveland or Buffalo. As I've posted before - I personally know a number of people who have moved or who are intending to move out of MA due to lack of job mobility, quality of life and high costs. Most of my retired friends are moving to FL to avoid income taxes. We are digging our own grave.
Again - would love to see someone explain to me why our city budget has increased 58% over the past 10 years while serving a school district that has shrunk by 12% in a 28% inflation environment. From other posts I've read, the state budget has grown similarly.
Balkanization and Waste
I've always marveled at the duplication of services and agencies and the poor fit/nesting of city/town and state systems. That not only generates waste, it creates chaos.
The other problem, on the state level, is the year to year budgets and a lack of dedicated funding streams for various legislative schemes. That has to come into the 21st century before a Hood Canal disaster happens here (the event that made Washington change their similar system).
Unfortunately, we have seen what happens when somebody tries to fight the existing systems ... Deval Patrick!
Deval went about it all
Deval went about it all wrong, he is taking a shot gun approach that has taken on a burn the village salt the earth feel. He has thrown so many of his former friends under the bus he seems to be more hated among some Democratic politicos then even Mitt Romney. He has also turned his back on those who were on his side by going limp at the wrong time when it came to important fights and even managed to alienate the change brigaide by pushing for high paying jobs for his friends, and 100,000 personal assistants for his wife. He does one thing well, that is firing up his partisan base who make him look like he is king of the world by defending him across the web and in real life. Get those people alone in a room though and they will admit that they are not happy with him.
He's trying to run governement like a business
That doesn't do well when confronted with the nepotism networks and entrenched backslapping and balkanized governmental structures seen in these parts.
Of course, one would think he'd have figured that out by now - the entire system is predicated on inefficiency. Demanding efficiency and rationality from the outside makes you the enemy.
He made himself the enemy,
He made himself the enemy, look at his rhetoric. You do not get anywhere by kicking people when they do not do what you want.
Public Health Department?
One example of overlap - I've got no problem with the services they perform - but this should be a state function with localized services and offices - HIV, birth control education etc. coordinated by every little tom, dick and harryville seems a bit of overkill to me. In Boston the PHD includes the EMTs - back them out, centrally administer under the state and you save millions - maybe tens of millions in Boston alone. Instead, per the Boston Herald this morning we need to generate more revenue by renting out the men's room in the Common as a restaurant (no joke if you haven't read it) - wonder what the health dept says about that!?
renting out the men's room
Weiners and buns, weve got your weiners and buns here
Retired folks moving to Florida
Gee, has it gotten that bad? They never used to do that before Menino!
Forgot to mention...
They used to summer in Boston. They've since sold their boston residences and either stay in FL or spend the summer in ME,VT and NH.
Plus, No Tax on Magazines
Whenever I go to see family in NJ, I always forget that magazines are taxed there. Can't remember if NJ taxes clothing, but I know many states do.
15%
Is only for hotels in either King County or the City of Seattle, not sure which. The tax including the local add-on is between 7 and 10%.
There's no income tax there, so it's super regressive.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Sales Tax increase
Is it going to 6.5% or 6.25%?
6.25%, not 6.5%
Adam, you ought to fix your original post!
Yep, 6.25%
My apologies for the dumb typo! It's 6.25%.
I wont be voting for
I wont be voting for Deval.
Not because Im against tax increases, but because he was a pussy, and abandoned his 19 cent gas hike plan in favor of this.
Option A: Gas tax that punishes those who pollute and cause congestion, which generally penalizes larger and more hazardous vehicles over smaller ones due to the correlation between size and millage
Option B: Punish everyone, even those who want to buy a bike or a new tree.
In related news, in what must be a first, a smart comment on boston.com! Ill repost it here:
"Tax on satellite dishes. Really? Think the cable companies had something behind that?
If someone could point me in the direction to an article that is a good summary as to what is being changed and by how much that would be excellent. I'd like to know the tax rate changes for hotels, meals, and liquor. I'm also interested in what concessions were made to ethics, pension, and transportation were made."
Agreed
The gas tax hasn't been raised since the early Nineties. It actually *fell* due to inflation and they don't want to raise it. Instead they raise a tax that will never get cut unless the legislature passes a law to do so. At least the gas tax phases itself out and will be even less of a bite as vehicles become more efficient. It's just ridiculous.
Exactly!
Massachusetts is seen by some as the liberal/environment loving state, and in some ways they're right, however, the gas-guzzlers and their owners still run amok like obese five-year-olds and their parents who'll feed them whatever they ask for-whether that food is sugary cereal or dollars and dollars worth of fossil fuels.
Option A would most likely help keep MA's carbon footprint from growing a ton bigger-just like keeping the fatty foods away from the kidlet helps keep their feet from outgrowing their shoes in a short amount of time.
Option B would most likely keep some prospective MA buyers away, just like letting the kidlet whine a lot keeps people who might want to be your friend away from you.