Sunday, April 06, 2008

Action Alert: Corporate Taxes Cut April 8th


The Coalition of Social Justice sent a very important email.
Next Tuesday (April 8), the House is expected to vote on a proposal that would close corporate tax loopholes and cut the corporate income tax rate by 25% - costing $466 million!
The Speaker of the House, of course, is billing this as a great compromise: he agreed to cut corporate tax loopholes, but his "compromise" is so generous to Big Business that their taxes will be slashed an amount no ordinary citizen would ever be so lucky to receive.

It gets even worse.
Meanwhile, 103,000 corporations pay the minimum corporate tax of $456...while the average Mass. family pays $2700 in taxes. The proportion of state and local taxes paid by corporations in Mass is way below average - 42nd in the country! This is not fair!
Amen! The economic times are so bad - and getting so desperate - that my hometown of Swampscott is about to cut all of the high school's technical education classes. This comes one year after they shut down the best elementary school in the district, which consistently performed in the top 10 schools on the Massachusetts MCAS and was one of the state's few Compass schools. But it's okay to cut corporate taxes now?

It's good to see the Speaker willing to compromise on Governor Patrick's best ideas, and propose a few good ones of his own - from life sciences to renewable energy - but this just isn't good enough. We, as a state, are facing a billion dollar hole next year - and none of the politicians seem willing to do the courageous thing and raise taxes, even by a tiny fraction. Something's gotta give and so far it looks like only the middle and working class is the one sacrificing. Not good enough.

Contact your legislators. Tell them to make sure corporations in Massachusetts pay their fair share - that's all, just their fair share. We have real problems now and cutting corporate taxes isn't the solution. Enough is enough.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Where did you find that great telephone image? Can I swipe that for future use?

Anonymous said...

Most of the 103,000 corporations (OOgity BOOgity!) are small businesses who incorporate to protect their personal assets from lawsuits against their businesses.
They pay MORE than their fair share in personal income taxes, and double FICA thankyouverymuch.

Grow up, and stop with the reflexive spin of the word "corporate" as something evil.

Ryan said...

Go for it, Ari. I found part of it online, the rest I altered using GIMPshop.

Anon,

I have no problem with Massachusetts *small* businesses being taxed at a slightly smaller rate than the bigger, more profitable ones. No need to put words in my mouth. However, DiMasi's 'compromise' doesn't really do that - believe you me, these tax cuts aren't being supported by the Speaker for the Commonwealth's small businesses, that's for sure.

Anonymous said...

Ryan, what's your definition of small <25 employees? If you continually try to squeeze the businesses that are here, you won't have to worry about individuals having to pay such high state taxes, they won't have jobs to go to for them to earn anything anyway.

Ryan said...

Anon,

First, how will I continue to "squeeze" the small businesses here? Pray, tell, where have I agrued that the tax rate need be raised? Furthermore, none of these loophole cuts will effect Massachusetts-based small businesses. Again, I don't know how I have to phrase it: I'm not out there to hurt small businesses. My family owned a small business for about 30 years until recently and my entire point of blogging these past few months - during the casino debate - was the PROTECT SMALL BUSINESSES. This is asinine.

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