Why does MA need more tax money?

Submitted by Comprehensive-Bus661 t3_yhb73j in massachusetts

The public colleges are loaded with bloated salaries. At Bunker Hill Community College alone, there are 37 salaries over $97k a year, not a single one is a professor or instructor.

Similar thing for every public college. How many provosts, bursars, and Associate Deans do we need making over $150,000 a year?

I don’t mind paying taxes to support my community, but how about some accountability before reaching into more pockets? Maybe a few less “Associate Provosts” at $148k a year and we could fix a few more bridges!

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SweetHatDisc t1_iucv3y6 wrote

OP can't figure out if he wants to attack higher education or taxes on the very wealthy, so he jammed the two concepts together.

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Smoaktreess t1_iucu9e8 wrote

Are they loaded with ‘bloated’ salaries because there are so many colleges here we have competitive wages? Massachusetts is one of the most educated states and has a great education system. It is more expensive to live here and $150,000 for a job you need to have education and experience for doesn’t seem excessive.

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Comprehensive-Bus661 OP t1_iucvm6b wrote

If you can tell me what a bursar or provost does without looking it up, you win!

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TheBlazingTeacher t1_iudc2y2 wrote

If you can tell me how this tax on earners making 1 million is a bad thing, go ahead.

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yiddishemama t1_iugnpvw wrote

Bursar disburses money and deals with financial aid/student accounts. Provost is chief academic officer.

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fetamorphasis t1_iugkje7 wrote

Just because I (or any other random person) can’t tell you what a job does doesn’t mean that person doesn’t deserve to be paid a competitive wage. That makes no sense.

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dhoffer82 t1_iudddka wrote

Has anyone told him that K-12 public schools exist and cost money?

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Seaworthiness222 t1_iue2v5y wrote

? There are hundreds of police officers that make 200K a year. Sherriffs?

​

Why are you honing in on education?

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IncidentFar3094 t1_iucwiyz wrote

Question One opponents say Massachusetts already has enough money, and point to the surplus funds that are being rebated to tax payers.

But Question One is about fairness, not about the amount of money that is raised. It is about ensuring that the most wealthy pay the same overall rate as the rest of us. Including property taxes, the most wealthy are taxed at a lower percentage of their income. This is because a wealthy person's property tax is a smaller part of their income than an ordinary person's

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Intrepid_Priority154 t1_iud3wrd wrote

Property taxes are local. Also, rich live in high property taxed areas to keep out the poor.

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LetsPlayCanasta t1_iue93hm wrote

>It is about ensuring that the most wealthy pay the same overall rate as the rest of us.

They DO pay the same rate: MA has a flat tax on income. What could be more fair?

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gerkin123 t1_iuebokk wrote

MA has a structural problem with it's failure to adopt county-level funding systems. Schools within 5 miles of each other have different tax bases and consequently grossly uneven distributions of resources (doubly so since the state has been pushing ed-funding formulas onto townships for the past decade+).

The wealthy spend a far smaller percentage of their earned income, meaning that when it comes to sales taxes, the wealthy pay a smaller percentage of their total income to the state. Reason for this? People who are middle class and working class spend a much larger percentage of their earned income on week-to-week expenditures, while the top percentage folds much of their wealth into "not taxable annually" places. This futzes with annual calculations for state revenue.

Their property taxes flows proportionately to their community, meaning the ridiculously wealthy communities get ridiculously funded schools. But the state has less funding through sales to appropriate to the poorer districts with the greater volume of low income housing and higher population densities and greater student populations with smaller net revenue to be distributed across many more schools.

We have to acknowledge that, nationally, MA is in the minority--34 states have progressive tiered tax systems that acknowledge that wealthy need to contribute a higher percentage of their wealth because so much of it can be squirreled away, untaxed or undertaxed.

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SharpCookie232 t1_iudquv8 wrote

America is falling apart because the rich don't contribute. We need to be a society again.

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Comprehensive-Bus661 OP t1_iucx7vb wrote

So, they can pay for bloated salaries more fairly? Well, I guess I can get behind that. Not that it actually REDUCES the taxes I pay as a non-millionaire… It doesn’t take less from me so I can support myself, it just takes more from them. yay

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IncidentFar3094 t1_iucxqo5 wrote

Yes, if One had passed five years ago, the surplus would have been bigger and the upcoming tax refunds ordinary taxpayers are receiving soon would be bigger

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Intrepid_Priority154 t1_iud3ys7 wrote

So socialism?

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IncidentFar3094 t1_iudc97t wrote

Yes, only inverted socialism, where the ordinary earners pay 10% = 5% state and 5% local while high earners currently pay 5%= 5% state and just a small percent local.

Clarify: we currently have inverted socialism.. High earners pay less. Q1 evens it up a bit

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IncidentFar3094 t1_iudd6sa wrote

But I have to admit I have no idea what a rebate would look like with Q1 in place. Would the high earners get a higher rebate? Seems only fair they should. So I don't know

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fetamorphasis t1_iugkpfv wrote

The rebate is a flat percentage of total tax liability. So the high earners would get more absolute dollars but the same percentage refund.

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Comprehensive-Bus661 OP t1_iucy6fh wrote

MA legislators are currently working on a bill to redistribute the refund on a progressive scale but I don’t think it passed, yet so not sure that’s correct.

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IncidentFar3094 t1_iucy9z2 wrote

Yeah, it hasn't happened yet, but Charlie Baker is gonna make it happen

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dogmom603 t1_iufii8l wrote

Not allowed under the current constitution. Not allowed to tax the same class of income at different rates for different people, so the rebates have to happen proportionally based on how much each taxpayer actually paid.

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gerkin123 t1_iudjy2z wrote

I mean, a quick search reveals that BHCC has $81 million in annual expenditures. If this were a private corporation, we wouldn't blink at the idea that people are making that kind of figure. Whether private or public, all public ed schools need to be at least somewhat competitive in the job market and that means salaries and benefits.

People who are against funding education often claim to believe in the free market. I don't see why it isn't apparent that market forces work against schools, too. There's a supply and demand in the labor force, too, and frankly I don't think anyone wants someone OK with $70k/annual being in charge of that much money or the organizational structures that distribute it.

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SomeHomeOwner t1_iud61pb wrote

It's a shame OP doesn't have the slightest clue what they're talking about. That list of salaries includes three provosts, and then from there it's all deans, directors, the president and other executives, chief of police, etc. Even if you eliminated the three provosts that would only save a few hundred thousand dollars from the state budget which translates into about 50 cents in tax savings ANNUALLY for OP, but creates administrative chaos for a state funded higher education facility. Perhaps if OP had gone on to higher education he/she would have the mental capacity to understand this.

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Comprehensive-Bus661 OP t1_iud8rgv wrote

That’s just Bunker Hill Community College.

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SomeHomeOwner t1_iudlaa2 wrote

Massachusetts collected over $34 billion in 2021 alone. We can afford a few administrative staff to keep our state funded higher education institutions functioning properly. You want to find ways to balance the budget? Put a flat 1% tax on the gross incomes of the top 1% earning businesses and individuals in this state. Also.. it's time to tax all religious institutions. That will more than make up for any imaginary budget issue you've conjured up in your imagination.

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NotnotNeo t1_iudmmgz wrote

>how about some accountability

you mean like having the best education system and standard of living in the country?

jesus christ, posts like this make me SO HAPPY that [i hope] you'll be raked over the tax coals. there's room for more if we just tax outright stupidity.

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Quincyperson t1_iuef121 wrote

Check out what they pay “public employees” and “educators” down south, where the public education is abysmal

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Santorini1963 t1_iufvgey wrote

In just a few more years… there won’t be much left to tax!

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LetsPlayCanasta t1_iueaf0j wrote

UMass just spend thousands of dollars for an outside forensics group to investigate racist emails that were an obvious hoax. When - surprise! - they couldn't find anything, Umass hired another group on the taxpayer's dime.

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Past-Adhesiveness150 t1_iuew813 wrote

Well...I dont know. There's inflation. So, instead of raising taxes on everyone, they can raise it on a few who won't even miss it.

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RealtorInMA t1_iugvko7 wrote

MA needs more money because our transit system sucks.

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March_Latter t1_iud0nik wrote

If you watch the comments what they want is a tax on the wealthy and what its for is simply am excuse for what they want. They are a people without any ethics and the more i see it, the less I want to be here. I will probably follow the millionaires out the door as I am already establishing assets elsewhere, and those are not taxed by Mass. Wait till they find out they are just repeating history and the outcome was less money for the state.

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Intrepid_Priority154 t1_iud43de wrote

Wait until OP finds out that each state school has their own purchasing department and they refuse to allow a consolidation to increase purchasing power because if I had to guess the purchasing employees are politically connected.

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[deleted] t1_iuctu9o wrote

[deleted]

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heklakatla t1_iucy962 wrote

We're an expensive place to live and we have to fund police, fire, education, elder services, DPW, etc. It's not as if you're not getting anything for the taxes. Would you rather have something come up and we're not able to afford it? We've had Chapter 62F on the books since the mid-1980s and this is only the second time (first time since 35-years (1987)) that they will refund money to its residents. They're not keeping it. There is a law there to protect you in that regard.

Do we pay more than the average state? Yes (source: https://taxfoundation.org/tax-burden-by-state-2022/) but it's not nearly as much as folks make it out to be and we're well within the StdDev (average on that page is ~10.6% with a StdDev of 2% and getting a much better set of services than a lot of the states lower on the list. You might be fortunate and not in a position where you're currently leveraging all of those but at some point you may need it.

Life is too short and it's not worth stressing over things like this. I've known too many people that left life early due to stress induced issues. I'm sure MA would love to keep you and your family but if it is going to cause undue stress or burden in your life and you don't need the volume or range of services then move (NH is close and would save you 0.9%...the balance of the NorthEast has a higher tax burden then MA & NH until you get to PA).

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dogmom603 t1_iufj2bw wrote

Don’t forget about the MA estate tax. Highest in the country. People are already leaving the state to avoid this - those most impacted by this already have residences in other states that have lower or no estate tax. Q1 is just one more reason to leave, but it is already happening.

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Express-Ad-1481 t1_iucuv10 wrote

Another government problem caused by government intervention. The government should never have began guaranteeing loans, it caused tuition inflation, the same thing that sleepy’s attempt at debt forgiveness will do. Government is inherently corrupt and wasteful - you should never trust the government to make your financial decisions.

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