Farmers say Fair Share Amendment isn’t fair
A group of farmers representing over 800 years of generational participation in agriculture met virtually with the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance Wednesday to warn anyone who would listen they will reap what they sow if the state passes a millionaire’s tax.
“We’re here every single day, we work, our spouses understand, our friends understand, you start to look around and ask what’s it for,” Matt Fitzgerald told the group.
“At some point, everything gets squeezed, at some point people are just going north,” he said.
Fitzgerald owns Mann’s Orchard in Methuen, which was founded 1877. He said he can literally stand in front of his farm and watch the business in the state heading north where the taxes are fewer and the fiscal climate generally more favorable for corporations.
He was joined by about half a dozen fellow farm owners from communities across the Commonwealth, some tended by fifth and sixth generation farmers.
Their message was clear: the state’s proposed Fair Share Amendment is anything but fair.
“People have to look out of the box when you’re looking at proposals such as this,” Leo Cakounes told the group.
Cakounes is a cranberry farmer. He’s in the farming business, he said, despite the fact his family discouraged him from agriculture specifically because of the regulatory and tax hurdles involved.
The Harwich farmer said lawmakers aren’t considering who the change in the law will impact.
“It’s going to affect me, who quite honestly has never seen a million dollars of income in family farm products in my 20 years in the cranberry business,” Cakounes said.
His sentiment was echoed by the group — they aren’t millionaires, but their properties are their retirement savings. Taxing those savings, they say, will put their children out of the farming business.
The Fair Share Amendment will be on the November ballot after legislative addition. It would establish a 4% tax on incomes over $1 million.
Proponents say it would add $2 billion in revenue to the state for infrastructure and education. Opponents say would impact many more people than predicted.
“Many of the taxpayers in any given year that will be subject to this tax are onetime millionaires — exactly what these farmers have indicated,” said Eileen McAnneny, president of the nonpartisan Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.