Retailers campaigning to lower Massachusetts sales tax

BOSTON (AP) — A 2018 ballot campaign to lower the state's 6.25 percent sales tax is being considered by brick-and-mortar retailers stung by the migration of consumers to online shopping and frustrated by Beacon Hill's retreat from an annual sales tax holiday.

"It's having a severe impact on dark storefronts, everywhere from our main streets to our major retail malls," said Jon Hurst, longtime president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts.

Anger among Bay State merchants, Hurst said in an interview, has reached a level he's never seen, fueled partly by the perceived inequity of a sales tax they must collect but that out-of-state online retailers — not to mention stores in tax-free New Hampshire — do not.

Popular with retailers and shoppers alike, the two-day sales tax holiday was becoming a summer tradition before lawmakers scrapped it last year amid concerns over slumping revenues. Those worries have not abated.

A recently approved $40.2 billion state budget slashed revenue projections for the new fiscal year by $733 million, raising fresh doubts about whether Massachusetts can afford to surrender even two days of sales tax receipts.

Democratic legislative leaders haven't altogether ruled out reviving the sales tax holiday in August, but time is running short.

Robert Saquet, owner of Eggers Furniture in Middleborough, a business that traces its roots to 1832, said the summer tax holiday is a shot in the arm for retailers.

"It takes an otherwise slow month and makes it busy," he said. "It motivates people to spend money."

The store's August sales were off some 80 percent last year compared to the previous year, Saquet added, when there was a sales tax holiday.

"People feel when they have a chance to beat the tax man, they do it," he said.

Hurst's group, meanwhile, has been gauging support from retailers for trying to lower the sales tax, possibly to 4.5 or 5 percent, through a ballot question. The first step in a lengthy process to place a question before voters would be filing an initiative petition with the state attorney general by Aug. 2.

Among potential obstacles would be the daunting costs involved in a ballot campaign, including the required collection of some 65,000 voter signatures.