It’s time for lawmakers to get serious about tax cuts

The fiscal 2023 budget that a legislative committee must reconcile received some clarity last week with the passage of the Senate’s $49.8 billion spending plan.

What’s not clear is whether lawmakers intend to pass along any significant tax relief to their constituents.

“This budget contains no tax increase, this contains no tax decreases,” Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues said to start debate on the budget.

And after three days and more than 1,100 amendments, that remained the case.

None of Gov. Charlie Baker’s tax-cut proposals were included in the final version of the Senate bill.

“We know the governor has filed, separately from the budget, tax relief proposals totaling well over $700 million. We know (Senate President Karen Spilka) has been very public and clear that we in the Senate will engage in tax discussions and a tax debate in the near future, so we can apply our collective wisdom on how to provide and how to focus relief for hardworking people in the commonwealth,” Rodrigues told senators.

Ahead of the Ways and

Means panel’s budget release on May 10, Spilka, in response to an April tax revenue surplus of $2 billion, had called on her members to consider some sort of tax relief for constituents before the end of the legislative session.

The Senate’s budget was approved unanimously and now moves to conference with the House’s version, which also didn’t include any tax relief.

The House approved its $49.7 billion budget in April.

Rodrigues and House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz will lead a committee to resolve the two chambers’ budget differences, ostensibly before the legislative session officially ends on July 31, which rarely happens.

Speaker Ronald Mariano told reporters last week that he had his House colleagues working on some sort of tax relief, though he wouldn’t say what that relief would look like.

While legislative leaders issue vague tax-relief assurances, specific cuts offered by the governor and a bipartisan group of senators have been summarily dismissed.

In his budget proposal released in January, Baker asked the Legislature to consider about $700 million in tax cuts.

Baker proposed easing the tax burden for some seniors, renters and low-income families, while also lowering the state’s capital gains and estate taxes.

Republican Sens. Bruce Tarr and Ryan Fattman, joined by Democratic Sens. Barry Finegold and Anne Gobi, offered an amendment that would suspend the state’s gas tax, at an estimated cost of $175 million, until Sept. 5.

Tarr and Fattman, joined by Democrat Sen. Michael Moore, also proposed an amendment that would accomplish much of what Baker sought in his budget.

It’s time for the Senate and House leaders to submit concrete tax-cut ideas, instead of simply rejecting the earnest taxcut initiatives of others.

We submit that raising the estate-tax exemption — one of the governor’s proposals — provides a reasonable starting point.

It’s a no-brainer that should encounter little opposition in either chamber.

With the rapid increase in home values, the middle class has suddenly become its unintended target.

Massachusetts currently allows a $1 million estate-tax exemption, which means that if your estate is worth more than $1 million when you die, that excess amount is subject to tax capped at 16% before it’s disbursed to your heirs.

Some state lawmakers want to double that exemption, which would refocus that tax on its intended target — the 1 percenters.

Oregon and Massachusetts currently have the lowest threshold for estate taxes, according to the Tax Foundation. Only 12 states total, plus the District of Columbia, impose an estate tax at all.

That’s one, lawmakers.

With a treasury overflowing with revenue, there’s ample opportunity to do much more.