$2.75 for your vote?
With the Democratic primary just two weeks away, the conversation has become -- predictably enough -- all about taxes. But are we talking about the right taxes?
Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey has promised to swear unto Barbara Anderson to ``oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes," and favors an immediate rollback of the state income tax to 5 percent, from 5.3 percent. While none of the Democrats has been willing to take The Pledge, Attorney General Tom Reilly is now -- as opposed to before -- in favor of the income-tax rollback voters approved six years ago. Deval Patrick is against cutting the income tax. Chris Gabrieli has proposed a third way that ties future tax reduction to growth in state revenues.
For all the focus on cutting the income tax, here is what it comes down to in dollars and cents: $2.75 a week.
That number is a little more if you make more, a little less if you make less. The numbers come from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, which calculated what cutting the income tax rate to 5 percent would mean in the 2008 tax year. For a married couple with a household income of $60,000 (slightly more than the median household income) the tax rollback would cut their state income tax by $143 a year, or $2.75 a week. A married couple with two kids and a household income of $80,000 would save $175 a year. A single person making $50,000 would save $131. A married couple with two kids making $100,000 a year would save $235.
Now any tax savings is a good savings in my house. But what has been going on with property taxes during the Romney years makes the income tax savings look like chump change.
Let's go back to the Revenue Department numbers. Since fiscal year 2002, the average single-family property tax bill statewide has risen from $3,015 to $3,799 in 2006 -- a 26 percent increase, or $784 a year. Check your bill; it may well be higher. Overall, the residential property tax levy has increased statewide by $1.8 billion, or 32 percent.
These are big increases. And your property tax, unlike your income tax, doesn't go down when you've had a tough year on the job. It just demands to be paid, good year or bad.
The surge in property tax has been created by two factors: most importantly, the huge cut in local aid forced by the state's fiscal crisis. And secondarily by the shift from commercial taxpayers to residential taxpayers as home prices climbed and commercial property values declined.
``The real problem we have is not so much the income tax. It is that despite Proposition 2 1/2 there have been very rapid increases in residential property taxes -- underline residential property taxes," says Barry Bluestone, dean of Northeastern University's new School of Social Science, Urban Affairs and Public Policy.
The result: Across the Commonwealth, local taxpayers are paying more and getting less in municipal services.
Four years ago Mitt Romney broke with the Republican tradition of signing the no-new-taxes pledge, calling it ``government by gimmickry." As it turned out, it just wasn't his gimmick of choice. Shifting the tax burden on cities and towns was.
Of all the major candidates, Patrick and Gabrieli have emphasized property tax relief the most. Gabrieli has been most thoughtful and most specific. He would devote 40 percent of the state's new revenue growth to expansion of local aid and new investments, 40 percent to income tax reduction, and 20 percent to the rainy day fund.
That kind of balanced approach is a lot harder to explain in a 30-second TV spot than taking The Pledge. But long after the TV ads are gone, I'll still have to pay my property-tax bill -- which continues to rise.
Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at bailey@globe.com or at 617-929-2902. 