Mass. tax policy is just imploring the wealthy to leave

Re “Businesses win some, lose some in Senate plan” (Trendlines, Business, June 10): Massachusetts tax policy is a study in coastal elitism and arrogance. The “accelerating outmigration, a housing shortage, and the state’s outlier policies on estate and investment taxes” that Larry Edelman cites should be a wake-up call. The governing class believes there is some exceptionalism that will tie people who generate wealth to the Commonwealth. It won’t. Why would tech entrepreneurs choose to start a company here knowing that they will be pay a punitive “millionaires tax” if they are successful? There are plenty of other places that will encourage their contribution to the economy, not discourage it.

Why does Massachusetts feel overly entitled to the savings of even moderately successful people, with distorted capital gains taxes while they are alive and an insane estate tax when they die? A reasonable solution would be a moderately progressive income tax and elimination of the abusive outlier taxes. In return, taxpayers should get a high-functioning, efficient transportation system and concrete projects and policies to create housing and respond to the causes and effects of climate change.

Instead, current Massachusetts tax policy sends the message that we are doing nothing to make the state more attractive and that wealth creators are not welcome. The half-measures contained in current proposals do not begin to fix the problem.

People are voting with their feet. The governor and Legislature say they want to eliminate wealth disparity. Apparently, the solution is to push out the wealthy and leave the poor to struggle on their own. If that’s what they really want, I suggest a new motto: Massachusetts, the Alabama of the North.

JOE MULLIN Boston

The writer is a real estate and technology investor and developer.