WBUR reported this morning that Massachusetts Treasurer Tim Cahill will be leaving the Democratic Party. It was covered by 35 news sources based on news.google.com, including The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and others. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that his departure from the Democratic Party would receive at least an order of magnitude more coverage than his apparent conflicts of interest.
Good luck with the party change, Tim. Its a lot more fun outside of a party that controls the 80% of the legislature, but still socks it to the poor with a sales tax increase while not halting the decrease in the corporate income tax rate.
Yes, you heard that right, the 9.5% corporate income tax changes to 8.75% in 2010, 8.25% in 2011 and 8% in 2012+. Financial institutions rates will change from 10.5% now to 10% in 2010, 9.5% in 2011 and 9% in 2012+. My how "progressive" these Democrats are.
UPDATE: Apparently Steve Grossman, former head of the Massachusetts Democratic Party and a past candidate for Governor, will run for Massachusetts Treasurer.
You obviously don’t know much about corporate taxation. Although the rate is dropping, MA moved from a separate company taxation (each company of a corporation taxed separately – allowing companies to avoid MA tax) to a unitary taxation (companies of one corporation must file one combined MA return). Please do your homework before you blog.
Hi danny,
Thanks for commenting.
While you are correct that the Commonwealth’s changes of corporate taxes to use combined reporting will generate additional revenue to offset the cuts in the corporate income tax rate, that is as if the US Congress changed Federal tax law to ban various tax loopholes that benefited the wealthy and then reduced the maximum marginal income tax rate.
Between 1999 and 2006 US corporate profits nearly doubled ($856 billion vs. $1608 billion) while GDP grew about 21%. These are BEA figures and the corporate profits are peak to peak and so are not affected by the business cycle. Since most of those profits make their way into the hands of the wealthy (via dividends or increased stock prices), such an increase in profits fuels the increasing income inequality we have seen for over 30 years. Changing to combined reporting is one way of making the tax system more fair.
By reducing the corporate tax rate, legislature in essence paid off the corporations to stop using a major tax loophole. The poor and middle class who are bearing the brunt of the 25% increase in the sales tax don’t warrant such treatment.