BMG News has called the following results in the three statewide ballot questions:
Question 1 (repeal sales tax on alcohol): Yes
Question 2 (repeal chapter 40B): No
Question 3 (cut sales tax to 3%): No
If we had to take one “bad” result in MA, I’d definitely have picked question 1. So, there you go.
Looking like a really great night in Massachusetts, even as the rest of the country isn’t going so great. But, honestly, it could have been a lot worse. We’re keeping the Senate, and we may win some seats that were in serious danger. WV looks like a win, and IL, PA and CO are promising, if not yet in the bag. We lose the House, but we could have lost it by a lot more than we did.
Please share widely!
They vote to remove the booze excise tax and to remove the sales tax exemption on booze. Then you’ve got one tax (no “double), and you’ve got one which brings in more revenue, and makes the tax code more fair and consistent.
And I voted yes on 1. And no on the other two. Looks like a good night for me on questions.
Alcohol isn’t taxed double…it’s taxes something like sextuple.
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p>You grow the hops and sell it to a brewer. That’s taxed. Brewer makes it, sells it a distributor. That corporate income is taxed, and it’s taxes again when distributor sells it to you. If any of the stuff is imported — as most alcohol is — there are tariffs involved. The ingredients in your Heineken were already taxes several times before it hit your mouth. And nobody had a problem with it.
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p>But what do I know? I’m just a tax-and-spend liberal.
I think the Massachusetts sales tax is only at the retail level, and I don’t think that Massachusetts collects a tariff on imports. I also don’t think that a tax on a brewer’s income is the same as a tax on the brewer’s product.
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p>I think the issue that resonated was (i) imposing a tax that drives up the retail price, and then (ii) imposing a tax that is a function of the retail price. That is why people said it is a “tax on a tax” and while this was negligible, it wasn’t false.
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p>As a rule, I don’t like double taxation. That is why, if I were appointed Grand Poohbah for a day, would abolish the corporate income tax outright, along with the different tax treatment of dividends and capital gains, which are supposed to address the double taxation issue. Just tax everything the same, when it goes to people, and it would be a whole lot simpler and more fair.
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p>End of digression.
Everyone who votes to do that can be hit with “ignoring the will of the voters” next time around.
Statewide we did well, but we lost some great progressives in the State House. Very sad. Maybe 2012 will be a wave moving in the other direction.
basically, not a single town that borders NH voted for it.
not a single town on the border voted against it.
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p>Time for bed for me I guess.
The least worst question in hard dollars or effect on the poor was the booze tax. Still, it galls me that the lobby once again won an undeserved exemption.
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p>But thank god we have smart voters in MA who think past the feel-good “let’s cut taxes!” meme that grows so stale and tired and yet continues to be used…that sales tax rollback would have been terrible.
Sales tax exemption on food, clothing, prescription drugs or bud light?
My logic was – on one hand, if we are not die-hard libertarians and agree with the premise that the government has the right to implement taxes and to drive social policies with taxes, then making an exemption for alcohol just doesn’t make sense (see Ryan’s comment above). On the other hand, sales tax is regressive [and also collection is expensive as all the retail businesses have to collect it, and that’s an extra thing they really shouldn’t do].
I would eagerly remove the sales tax altogether, while, in revenue-neutral fashion, making the income tax rate higher.
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p>Well, that’s fine, except that Question 3 would have done the first while not the second, creating a $2.5B budget hole in the process. So I don’t see the logic of your vote.
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p>Anyway, Question 3 is yet another excellent example why taxing and spending measures should never be on the ballot, ever.