Around New England

High Taxes Causing Residents To Flee Massachusetts, GOP State Rep Says In Op-Ed

June 8, 2023

The Republican minority leader of the Massachusetts House of Representatives says Massachusetts should lower taxes in response to the rapid rate at which residents are departing for other states.

” ‘Tax the rich’ is a popular refrain in some political quarters. Unfortunately for Massachusetts, a lot of people being hit with these new taxes are not rich. But they are mobile. And they are fleeing Massachusetts in droves to states that won’t treat them like an ATM,” writes state Representative Bradley H. Jones Jr. (R-North Reading) in an op-ed column for The Boston Globe, along with co-author Ross Connolly, regional director for New England at Americans for Prosperity.  

The column notes that only California, New York, and Illinois are losing residents at a higher rate — and says the only thing that connects the four states and their outflow of residents is high taxes.

Jones and Connolly call on the Massachusetts Senate “to block the House proposal to turn the state tax rebate program into an income transfer program.”

Jones and Connolly also call for increasing the threshold for the state’s estate tax to $3 million. Massachusetts is the only state besides Oregon that sets the threshold at $1 million. The Massachusetts estate tax also has a so-called “cliff effect,” meaning that estates that trigger the $1 million threshold owe tax to the state based on the whole amount of the estate, not just the amount that is over the threshold.

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