Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Tonight in Somerville -Sciortino event with Deval

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Carl Sciortino has been my State Rep for four years now. I can go on and on about what a wonderful representative he is – but I will try to be brief.

I find  Carl to be  extremely intelligent and personable. He is quick to understand multiple sides of an issue or problem and is diligent about doing research to be as informed as possible. He really listens to his constituents and tries to understand their point of view – even when he may not agree with it. I am constantly impressed with his people skills, his honesty, and his openness.

Carl is a progressive democrat who supports same-sex marriage, a women’s right to choose, and stem cell research. Public education and the environment are important areas of concern for him. He supports the extension of the green-line into Medford and that it is done in such a way that the community is well-served and that our concerns are taken into consideration.

You can read more about his accomplishments on his website:

http://www.electcarl.org/accom…

I believe strongly that it is not only the 16 precincts that make up the 34th Middlesex district that benefit from having Carl as our representative, but all of Medford and Somerville profit. And, I’ll go further and say that keeping Carl in the General Court benefits Massachusetts as a whole.

This year he has a serious challenger and has the additional handicap of not having his name on the ballot. As a result, the campaign needs to raise a lot of money.

I do not want to lose Carl as my representative! Please help keep Carl in the House by making a contribtion to his campaign!

http://www.actblue.com/page/ke…

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  1. Carl Sciortino has filed a large number of bills and I think this, from his website, stands out as important:

    Corporate Tax Loopholes

    Led the effort to ensure that large multi-state corporations can no longer exploit tax loopholes to avoid paying their fair share in Massachusetts.  This funding helps offset the burden of local property taxes.

    He’s done a fair amount of work on education policy but I don’t pretend to understand education policy, so I won’t comment.

    • How do higher State Corporate taxes help ‘offset the burden of local property taxes’?

      • more state aid for infrastructure like roads, more grant monies available for local projects, etc.

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        p>It certainly isn’t a $1 for $1 exchange, but there is some relief provided, generally in the form of a deferred 2.5 override or debt exclusion.

        • By that measure, any revenue increase, or cost cut ‘helps reduce the local property tax burden’.  

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          p>How condescending.  The Rep figures his constiuency is stupid? Why not just tack that obligatory phrase to the end of all bills.  

          • A lot of bills are of the form: increase tax A to pay for B, or cut budget X to increase budget Y. They’re often just zero-sum efforts. To my knowledge, there’s not a whole lot of bills like this one that are pure revenue generation. That’s what we need more of to decrease the property tax burden.

            • Property tax relief is so easy.  Rather than feel-good, do nothing language, all they have to do is raise the Corporate taxes (as they did), then from the revenue, give property owners credits for some amount of property tax paid (as they didn’t). Presto, property tax relief.

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              p>The ending sentence such self-serving clap-trap. This corporate tax increase does it all:  Helps lower the property tax burden; helps feed the hungry; helps fill the potholes; educate our children, fund the underfunded pension…..

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              p>But instead of listing all those good things, it memes the cause du jour, lowers the property tax burden.  Yeah, that’s it.  BTW, my property tax rose again.  That’s the 19th straight year of increases.

                • Why spend any resources on getting violets and chickweed or dandelions for that matter, out of your lawn?  Don’t spend any of your energy or any of the earth’s resources that kind of lawn care.  

      • For several years, I have been fighting in the Legislature to close corporate tax loopholes. These flaws in our tax code allow large, multistate corporations to pay little or no income tax in Massachusetts, regardless of the amount of money they make here.

        The “loophole” he is referring to was the entire MA separate entity corporate taxation system.  It was established many years ago and it was outdated, but there were no easily identifiable “flaws,” it was simply the entire reporting system that needed to be updated.  And the companies that actually make the money here were paying tax.  Multistate corporations were able to siphon off profitable parts of their business that don’t require a geographic location to make profits and locate them in low or no tax states.  Perfectly legitimate under the old tax system.  Thats why MA needed a more updated system, but to blame the “evil corporation” taxpayers for the failures in the MA tax system reveals Rep. Scortino as little more than a pandering charlatan.

        These reforms close loopholes while also offering businesses a clearer tax code and a reduction in the corporate tax rate; moves that will help small businesses compete while ensuring that multistate corporations pay their fair share.

        Combined reporting, in my opinion, is certainly better than separate entity taxation.  However, it is certainly not clearer.  Separate entity is fairly simple, more simple than defining and determining a unitary group. (I suppose the taxpayers will no longer be subject to the whims of the judiciary when evaluating business purpose and economic substance, which does provide some simplification.)  However, the folks at the MA DOR will have to work very hard to develop the unitary system, and there will be considerable dispute and litigation after it is implemented.  It’s worth it in the long run to have a better tax system, but please don’t try to sell anyone knowledgeable of multistate corporate taxation on the simplicity of unitary reporting.

        The original corporate tax bill that was proposed in the House was not strong enough. Although it closed many loopholes, it also slashed the corporate tax rate far beyond what was affordable. I filed an amendment that lessened the rate cut and tied it to the state of our economy. In a poor economic climate, we should not be letting corporations off the hook while homeowners and residents continue to shoulder the costs. My amendment was included in the final bill passed by the House of Representatives.

        Until this year the corporate tax rate was 9.5%, one of the highest in the country.  The Corporate tax study group urged a “meaningful reduction” to accompany combined reporting, but decided not to identify a specific rate.  Speaker DiMasi originally wanted a rate reduction to 7%.  If Rep. Scortino truly cared about small businesses he talked about in the last paragraph he would have realized that they have been shouldering a large percentage of the corporate tax collected and given them a more significant rate reduction.  But by this paragraph he had already moved on to homeowners and residents.  Its hard to pinpoint who this elusive pandering is actually aimed at.

        Throughout this process, my colleagues and I have remained active and vigilant. We have met with tax policy experts

        Maybe if Rep. Scortino had actually listened to some of these tax policy experts, he would be able to make a more cogent case for combined reporting.  But thats hard work and those guys are boring, its easier to just label multistate corporations as “evil” and pander to small businesses, homeowners, residents, small children, nuns that run orphanages, cute puppies and anyone else not willing to educate themselves on the issue and swallow the “just closing loopholes” garbage.  

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        p>But I suppose they’ve been fairly effective at convincing many that they were “just closing loopholes,” and the ends(combined reporting) achieved were ultimately good.  I just wish that if the decision was made to raise revenues, that MA policymakers could have had a serious policy discussion about which taxes should be increased rather than duping the public by “closing some loopholes.”  I’m not at all convinced that the corporate tax should be the first tax increased in order to raise revenues, and I think that would have been a worthy discussion to have.  If only policymakers were willing to have such a discussion.  But, once again, good economic and tax policy is subverted to political expedience.  Shame on Rep. Scortino for being one of the chief enablers.

        • Twice you put the word “evil” in quotes, implying that he used that word to characterize the corporations. That is entirely false. Here are your two instances:

          <

          p>

          Thats why MA needed a more updated system, but to blame the “evil corporation” taxpayers for the failures in the MA tax system reveals Rep. Scortino as little more than a pandering charlatan.

          <

          p>and here

          <

          p>

          its easier to just label multistate corporations as “evil” and pander to small businesses, homeowners, residents, small children, nuns that run orphanages, cute puppies and anyone else not willing to educate themselves on the issue and swallow the “just closing loopholes” garbage.

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          p>Please provide proof that Sciortino used that language or apologize for attributing it to him.

          • every time I quoted Rep. Scortino directly I put it in block quotes. I put the phrase “evil corporations” and “just closing loopholes” in quotes to add emphasis. I should have instead put them in italics. I apologize for that mistake.

        • We all know how you hate hate hate the “closing loopholes” characterization.

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          p>PW, once upon a time you wanted me to read a 686-page report, the COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS STUDY COMMISSION ON CORPORATE TAXATION for some background. I confess to not reading the whole thing, but I did find the Majority Report as of June 15, 2007, Appendix D. And here is a quote, with my emphasis:

          <

          p>

          In the first six weeks of its work, however, the Commission has identified as the most immediate problem the fact that the Commonwealth’s business tax laws allow significant avoidance not intended by the Legislature. This avoidance has helped reduce business tax receipts as a fraction of corporate profits from 11.5 percent in 1989
          to an all-time low of 5.1 percent in 2005 and 5.5 percent in 2006 – all while corporate profits were doubling (see charts in Appendix B). Larger multistate businesses, many of
          which are based outside of the Commonwealth, are the principal users of this kind of corporate structuring for tax reduction purposes – as illustrated in Appendix C. These
          tax avoidance methods are especially unfair to Massachusetts-based smaller businesses, which do not have access to sophisticated tax planning techniques or the opportunity to use them.

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          p>Like it or not, that was the majority report.

          <

          p>And I think it is not a stretch, not a flamboyant characterization at all, to colloquially refer to “significant avoidance not intended by the legislature” as loopholes.

          <

          p>And Carl’s noting of the disparate benefits of such for large multi-state corporations vs. mom-and-pops seems completely in line with the majority report.

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          p>A suggestion, PW: You should stick to talking about policy, and leave out the insults. People can disagree about this stuff on the merits — that’s OK. Most baffling to me is that you don’t even seem to disagree that much, but you still include the insults.

          • However I disagree that instituting combined reporting should have been used to raise the overall revenue collected by the corporate tax. As a matter of pure tax policy, combined reporting should have been instituted in a revenue neutral manner, and if AFTER THAT the MA legislature felt that more revenue should be collected by the corporate tax then they should have proceeded accordingly. Instead, by selling the change as just closing loopholes we have lost the opportunity to determine which source of revenue actually should have been increased. Perhaps attempting to raise more revenue from the corporate tax will harm the MA economy, and instead we should have been looking to another source. But now we won’t have that public debate because people like Rep. Scortino were ‘just closing loopholes’ and our economy might suffer as a result.  

          • And I think it is not a stretch, not a flamboyant characterization at all, to colloquially refer to “significant avoidance not intended by the legislature” as loopholes.

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            p>By comparison, it’s robably, not a flamboyant characterization at all, to colloquially refer to “abortion” as “murder”.

            <

            p>And probably not too much a stretch to imagine that someone who otherwise disagrees with Roe v. Wade, sees the ‘flamboyant’ characterization as distasteful.

            <

            p>But back to the point, Rep. Bosley said there are no loopholes in the tax law, only tax policy.  Who to believe?

            • Thanks, gary, for reminding us why argument by analogy is usually so weak. And for bringing in a red herring, as you seem to acknowledge.

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              p>Ah yes, tax policy::abortion as … ah never mind.

              • used by multistate corporations were not foreseen when the separate entity system was put in place decades ago. However, any MA policymaker who has been paying attention has known about these tax strategies for at least 10 years now. Can they really keep calling them loopholes when they have been complicit in their existence for the last decade? At what point do they lose their ‘unforeseenness’ and become the intended policy? This point is driven home by the fact that more than 20 other states have been using combined reporting since the 1980s. So they’ve known about the problems AND the solution for 10 years, but they’re just now getting around to ‘closing those loopholes.’ It’s a disingenuous claim.

                <

                p>And, once again, combined reporting is a significant change in theMA tax system. Here is another analogy for you. You find out that the pipes that you wanted in your house were installed wrong when you had it built 20 years ago. LYou deal with it for several years until you decide you’ve had enough. Would you find it an accurate description to say that you were ‘fixing your pipes’ if you decided to tear down the entire house and start from scratch?  

  2. Don’t forget the first big thing Carl did when he got to the house.  His first speech to the house was to urge them to restore funding for the Green Line expansion, that had been stripped from the proposed state budget.  That turned out to be one of only two items restored to the budget that year, and I’ve heard from several sources that Carl’s work and his eloquent, well-researched presentation to the house were key in making that happen.  That’s what kept the Green Line expansion project alive through a tough time, and now that it’s actually getting close to happening, we have him to thank for it.

    • for the record, you’re crediting carl sciortino with the green line extension actually happening?

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      p>was he the one man who happened to notice that the state had been under federal mandate to fully fund the green line extension dating back to early big dig appropriations?

      <

      p>

      • it was “eloquent” oratory, “convincing” his colleagues.
        Wow!  Glad to know thats how it works on Beacon Hill.  

      • Caricaturing my comment is kind of silly.  Yes, he deserves a lot of credit for it.  Yes, the state was in fact failing to notice that it was obligated (with no enforcement of that obligation), and had been stringing the extension along for years with no action, and almost let it die.  If it had not been for him I think there’s significant chance that it would’ve not happened (remember the state was trying to come up with “alternatives”, like more bus lines), and a significant chance that it might’ve been put off for several more years.

  3. one of the real, strong progressives on Beacon Hill. Our community definitely needs him. People, if they can, should donate heavily to his campaign – both time and money. It’s not many legislators where you can find them right on the issues – choice, equality, anti-casino, etc. – and have him show real leadership in the House, as well. Given today’s news, that certain people are trying to keep 1913 off the docket (coughdonatocough), it’s all the more important to have strong leadership on our issues in the House.  

  4. Carl’s campaign is in full swing, and as a sticker campaign will need us to step up big time with time and money to keep this seat progressive. This should be a no-brainer, a strong, accessible, competent progressive needs our help.

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