Healey tees up tax plan for March 1st
The wait for her long promised tax cut proposal is almost over, according to the governor.
“I will be filing, at the same time as my budget on March 1, a tax package. It’s a tax package directed at making life more affordable for folks, and we are busy putting the final touches on that proposal right now,” Gov. Maura Healey said.
Healey, during an interview with WBUR’s Tiziana Dearing broadcast Wednesday morning, reiterated an assertion she made while running for office and has maintained since winning her job: that the state is too expensive for working families and the government should do something about it.
“This is something that I focused on throughout the campaign. I have made it a priority,” she said. “Massachusetts is a great place as long as you can afford to live here, and right now, with the cost of housing, the cost of child care, and then some of what we’ve seen in terms of inflationary pressures, it’s tough.”
The governor previously signaled support for a tax relief package offered by former Gov. Charlie Baker last year and mostly approved by the Legislature at the end of summer.
That plan would have lowered the tax burden for seniors, provided additional tax relief to renters and low income families and changed the estate tax. But it never left the joint conference committee tasked with ironing out the details and subsequently died with the end of the last legislative session.
Now, Healey says, she willing to consider the same sort of relief. However, as has been the case for months, the governor was short on details even as she was heavy on acknowledgement of need.
“The goal here is to make Massachusetts more affordable,” she said. “This goes to us showing and making clear to people, look, Massachusetts is a place where you can come here, you can come here to learn and study, you can come here to grow a business, you can come here to work and afford to stay here. And if you’re from here, born here, this is the place where we want you to stay. We want you to grow families and we want you to grow careers.”
The tax cuts proposed by Baker would have cost about $700 million. It is unclear how much room will be found in Healey’s first budget for a new tax cut plan, though the Legislature told her at the end of January she would have about $40.41 billion in general state tax revenue to work with during the next fiscal year.