Last year, Massachusetts voters narrowly and foolishly approved a “millionaires tax”, which raised the state tax rate on income above $1 million from 5% to 9%.
Now the floodgates have opened. Governor Maura Healey has just proposed a new tax that would allow towns to impose a transaction fee of 0.5 percent to 2 percent on the portion of a property sale over $1 million. In Greater Boston, about one-fifth of all house sales are already above that amount.
The Tax foundation now ranks Massachusetts 47th in business-friendliness – ahead of only Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. It was 34th as recently as last year.
We’ve mentioned many times that the Northeast has just for the first time ever surrendered its long-standing regional economic supremacy to the southeast. It’s because of these soak-the-rich, tax “progressive” policies that simply make blue states poorer.