Fairer Taxes

What if we stopped hiking taxes and fees that target ordinary people and instead balanced the budget through fairer taxes?

In the last two budget cycles, Beacon Hill has allowed the budget to be balanced by raising a number of taxes and fees that hit working people hard.  They have raised the sales tax,  college tuition, MBTA fares,  and tobacco taxes.  Now they are thinking about raising the gasoline tax.

By cutting aid to cities and towns, legislators have forced hikes in property taxes. This strikes at homeowners.  Even their schemes for expanded gambling are, in the last analysis, a tax upon ordinary people.

When all state and local taxes are considered,  lower and middle income people in Massachusetts are paying at twice the rate of the highest income bracket – the top 1% whose average income exceeds $2 million per year. This is not a fair system, and Beacon Hill has made it even more unfair with tax hikes over the past decade.

Jill Stein will fight any attempt to balance the budget through tax or fee hikes that hit ordinary taxpayers.   She will stand for the fairness solution — which means closing any budget gap by asking higher-income taxpayers to pay something closer to the rate that most people have been experiencing for years.   Fairness is not only just, but is the only practical way to preserve essential services and to avoid a continuing series of budget crises.