Tax cut talk fueling our optimism for relief soon

Nationally and locally, recent developments have significantly improved the odds of enacting some meaningful tax relief — both short-term and long-term.

After hinting about it for some time, President Biden asked Congress to suspend federal gasoline and diesel taxes for three months Wednesday.

Biden’s past efforts to cut gas prices — including the release of oil from the U.S. strategic reserve and greater ethanol blending this summer — have done little to produce savings at the pump,

Suspending the gas tax constitutes the limit of the president’s ability to lower fuel prices, which are set by global markets, profit- driven companies, consumer demand and aftershocks from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the subsequent embargoes that followed.

The underlying problem remains a shortage of oil and refineries that produce gas.

At issue is the 18.3 cents-agallon federal tax on gas and the 24.4 cents-a-gallon federal tax on diesel fuel. If the gas savings were fully passed along to consumers, it would mean a savings of roughly

3.6% at the pump on a $5 gallon of gas.

But more importantly, Biden also called on states to suspend their own gas taxes or provide similar relief, the White House said.

We hope our Democratdominated Legislature is listening.

Democrats, who have stonewalled several attempts to suspend the state’s 24- cent gasoline tax, dismissed it as a gimmick with minimal relief for inflation-weary consumers.

However, a combined federal-state gas-tax reprieve amounts to spending 42-cents-a-gallon less at the pump, an 8.4% savings on a $5 gallon of gas.

And there are some signs that Democrat lawmakers — swayed or pressured by their president’s actions — might change their gas-tax stance.

State Sen. Ryan Fattman, R-sutton, noted at the State House on Tuesday that he drove past $5.37-per-gallon gas on his 50-mile commute from Sutton.

Fattman alluded to the president’s gas-tax comments and to Longmeadow Democrat

Sen. Eric Lesser’s conditional support on Sunday for a state gas tax holiday.

And prospects for more permanent state tax relief were expressed Tuesday in comments made by Senate President Karen Spilka at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast.

Legislative leaders in both branches have been saying they plan to produce a tax relief package. But a plan has yet to surface with less than six weeks remaining to get a bill through the Legislature and on Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk.

Under consideration are changes to the Earned Income Tax Credit and the estate tax, among others, Spilka said.

Last month, after his own address to the Greater Boston Chamber, the State House News Service reported that House Speaker Ron Mariano said the idea of raising the estate-tax exemption “was something that jumped out at us right away.’’

Baker filed a nearly $700 million relief package in January. It also proposed changing the estate-tax threshold — currently $1 million.

The estate tax is a transfer tax on the value of a decedent’s estate before distribution to any beneficiary.

Under Baker’s plan, the estate-tax exemption would double to $2 million. While the current tax applies to the full value of estates over $1 million, Baker’s bill (H. 4361) would tax only the amount above $2 million.

The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation has described our state as an “outlier among the states’’ on the estate tax, noting that the commonwealth’s and Oregon’s $1 million taxation thresholds are the lowest of the 12 states with estate taxes.

Though estate-tax changes appear to be emerging as a broad area of consensus, the Democrats’ version may differ from what Baker proposed.

But take heart, taxed Massachusetts residents, it appears help is on the way.