Good schools, public parks, reliable transit, and smooth roads help increase well-being and make a community prosperous. Together, we pay for these fundamentals through state and local taxes.
How to collect enough revenue to pay for these investments - and how to collect that revenue fairly - are questions that every community, including our Commonwealth, must answer.
Massachusetts' state and local tax system remains "regressive," meaning low- and moderate-income taxpayers pay a larger share of their incomes in taxes than those with higher incomes. A "progressive" tax system is one in which higher-income taxpayers pay a larger percentage of their incomes in taxes.
The options described in the paper include:
- Personal income tax options, like raising both the personal income tax rate and progressive exemptions,
- Wealth tax options, like raising the estate tax, and
- Business tax options, like enacting a surtax on companies where CEOs' pay rates are excessively high compared with median worker pay rates.
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