TAXACHUSETTS REDUX
Exodus sign of the times
Will the last American leaving Massachusetts please turn out the lights? You know the flight out of the People’s Republic is turning into a stampede when even the everclueless Boston Globe notices that there aren’t quite as many people here as once upon a time.
Headline: “‘People are leaving’: Massachusetts has lost 110,000 residents since COVID began. Is life better out there?”
To ask the question is to answer it. My only question is, how can it only be 110,000 that have checked out of here?
And by the way, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Half the people you pass on the street now are what the prosecutors sometimes call defendants at court hearings — flight risks.
Remember those old movies, Escape from New York and Escape from Los Angeles. They’re sometimes described as “postapocalyptic.” Now we have our own post-apocalyptic screen gem — Escape from Massachusetts.
Our apocalypse was last fall. That was when the hackerama, on its sixth try, finally passed the graduated income tax they’d been dreaming of since at least 1960. Finally, the state electorate was dumbed down enough to vote against its own economic interests.
Whenever states impose these so-called millionaires’ taxes, the supply of millionaires inevitably fails. They vanish, disappear. Usually it takes at least a few months for any state to react to the accelerating exodus of productive citizens and start lowering the threshold for “millionaires” to $500,000… $250,000… $100,000 and so forth.
But this is Taxachusetts, and so it was that only a few hours after the new tax went into effect last month, the shiftless solons at the State House moved to close a “loophole” — married couples filing separate income-tax returns to keep their income under $1 million.
By God, it would not stand. The payroll patriots couldn’t tolerate even the thought of “losing” a few million bucks that they’re planning to hand out to the non-working classes, a few of whom may even be American citizens.
By the way, the legislation to stop working Americans from filing taxes in the traditional ways in order to have more money to dole out to illegal immigrants was cofiled by Sen. Jason Lewis, now of Winchester, formerly of South Africa.
In other words, now you have a guy who wasn’t even born in our hemisphere, let alone our country, now trying to micromanage our lives down to how we file our taxes. How Massachusetts is it?
So the hacks and freerange transients are going to close the “loophole.” But guess what, that isn’t going to stop anybody with half a brain from fleeing.
Which is why the state Department of Revenue has recently updated its instructions to all the Commonwealth’s flight risks, i.e., people who work for a living.
If you want to read the following DOR diktat aloud, it sounds more authentic if you employ a German accent:
“You cannot change your domicile by taking a temporary or longer than expected absence from Massachusetts. You must not intend to return.”
That won’t be a problem, I can assure you.
“Your declaration of intent will be examined closely. If you assert that your domicile has changed, you bear the burden of proving that fact.”
In other words, when it comes to escape, you will — vill — be considered guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.
The DOR doesn’t provide any checklists as to how to avoid paying for all the Democrats’ woke welfare programs — DEI, sustainability, etc. That task is left to local financial advisers, law firms, accountants and the like, to give you advice on how to beat the insatiable state taxman.
Key number, of course, is 183 — the number of days you must remain outside the dreary confines of the Bay State. But that’s not all the hoops you have to jump through. Still, as the years have gone by, it becomes easier and easier to cut all ties.
For instance, the advisers tell you to complete your will under the laws of your new home state.
Given Massachusetts’ estate taxes, that’s an absolute no-brainer. Your future survivors should charge you with parental malpractice if you stick around Massachusetts so your estate is robbed after you’ve assumed room temperature.
How about this one — “Have any minor children attend schools in your new state.”
Massachusetts used to have some of the best public schools in the nation. That was a very, very long time ago.
“Change vehicle registration(s) and insurance to your new state.”
Another instant likely savings of a few thousand bucks.
Remember, this $1.3-billion tax increase only passed by a narrow 52-48 margin. And the victory only came after the state teachers’ unions spent $23 million on harvesting mail-in ballots from shutins and mitten-knitters who supported Question 1 (and not so coincidentally, the rest of the Democrat ticket).
I still remember the first time I ever saw such a checklist. It was in 1995, after Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy died in Hyannis Port at the age of 104. She hadn’t set foot in Florida in at least 13 years, but nobody in state government objected to the “First Family” filing her will in Florida and savings untold millions that could have been used as her, you’ll pardon the expression, fair share.
But unlike most of the state’s current flight risks, Rose Kennedy was a… Democrat.
By the way, I won’t be the last American turning off the lights in Massachusetts. I’m already gone.