Massachusetts lawmakers unveiled a tax relief package Tuesday aimed at delivering $561 million in reductions to taxpayers and companies during the current fiscal year through a slew of tax credits and other steps aimed at lowering tax burdens.
Top House and Senate Democrats have reached an agreement on a tax relief bill, and plan to send it to Gov. Maura Healey next week as an opening act for their fall session. But details are still scarce.
Gov. Maura Healey said Thursday that she is “absolutely” pushing legislators to complete a tax relief package that was promised over a year ago in the two months remaining in the formal lawmaking season of 2023.
Some of the powerful players in Massachusetts’ business community are getting impatient for long-promised, and long-delayed, tax relief as August stretches on without action.
Legislative negotiators filed a compromise $56.2 billion annual state budget Sunday night, but House and Senate Democrats did not reach an agreement on tax relief.
Both branches adjourned Thursday for another long weekend without an agreement on an overdue annual state budget that has now resided in the darkness of conference committee talks for seven weeks.
Lawmakers could combine virtually every tax relief measure proposed in divergent House and Senate bills and still keep the price tag close to the impact each branch’s budget-writers anticipated next year, a new report suggests.
The fate of tax relief will now rest with a legislative negotiating committee after the Senate on Thursday stamped its unanimous approval on a nearly $590 million package.
Amid debate over how to keep Massachusetts competitive and how tax cuts figure into that goal, Senate President Karen Spilka emphasized Thursday the importance of “shoring up and expanding” the state’s middle class.
Without the short-term capital gains tax rate reduction favored by Gov. Maura Healey and the House, the Senate tax package “offers little” to offset the Fair Share Amendment tax hike on the wealthy, Eileen McAnneny said.
The Senate’s top Republican opted against seeking a vote Thursday on a roughly $750 million tax relief proposal, but set off a debate that revealed some fault lines as senators prepare for action on a standalone tax bill that Democrats have promised is around the corner.
Senate Democrats rolled out a $55.8 billion state budget bill Tuesday, leaving room for about $575 million in future investments in tax relief, which the Senate budget chief said will be hitting the chamber floor for debate soon.
Gov. Maura Healey doubled down on her tax relief plan on Friday, insisting that a shortfall in state revenue that has plunged this year’s state budget into the red was predicted and accounted for in her fiscal 2024 budget.
The sudden thud of collapsing state tax revenues echoed through the halls of Beacon Hill on Wednesday, inverting a projected surplus of hundreds of millions of dollars into a shortfall nearly as large and reshaping debate about government spending and tax relief plans.
The full House couldn’t find a single thing they wanted to change in a nearly $1.1 billion tax relief bill on Thursday, instead lining up behind the exact proposal that House Democrats pushed through a committee two days earlier.
House Democrats have come around on the idea of slashing the state’s short-term capital gains tax rate after opposing it under Gov. Charlie Baker.
Three economic and fiscal factors have materially altered in Massachusetts and each factor makes the case for tax cuts even more compelling.
Top House Democrats plan to unveil and debate a “comprehensive” tax relief package in the next few weeks designed to make Massachusetts more affordable for its residents and “more competitive with other states,” according to Speaker Ronald Mariano, who pledged Thursday to deliver relief to people across the income spectrum.
The population of Massachusetts shrunk by nearly 8,000 people between July 2021 and July 2022, a drop of about 0.1 percent, but the newest estimate released in fresh data from the U.S. Census Bureau puts the state’s population ahead of its revised 2020 Census level.
Attempting to restart a debate that skidded out last summer, the Healey administration on Monday rolled out an $859 million tax relief proposal that would offer new breaks to hundreds of thousands of Bay Staters while reforming the estate tax and the levy on short-term capital gains.
