Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 is just over two weeks away and House and Senate budget negotiators are in the process of reconciling countless spending, policy, and technical differences between the two bills. This year, the always complex budget negotiation process is further complicated by separate tax…

“The scope of the House bill is more responsive to the cost of competitive challenges,” Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, told the Herald. “We’re still going to crunch the numbers, but the hope would be that the final package would include good ideas from both…

Meanwhile, a May report from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation said the “red flags are waving”when it comes to housing, transportation and migration trends. The state lost 110,000 workers between April 2020 and July 2022, MTF said. That outflow was concentrated among tax filers ages 26 to 35,…

Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, praised the Senate’s plan for a “commitment to meaningful reform” but said the exclusion of capital gains tax cut, as well as a scaled back estate tax relief and limited child tax credits, “undercut our collective ability to meet…

Today, the Senate Committee on Ways and Means (SWM) released its tax relief proposal. The plan, which mirrors the tax bill passed by the Senate in 2022, includes seven major tax relief provisions and carries an estimated Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 cost of $594 million.1 Like Governor Healey’s proposal,…

After four days of debate, the Senate finalized its $55.9 billion Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 budget; adding $82.2 million in new spending and 34 outside policy sections. The Senate took action on 1,049 amendments through a combination of standalone votes and amendment ‘bundles,’ which categorically…

The Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 budget process reached another milestone today with the release of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means (SWM) budget proposal. The $55.9 billion SWM spending plan differs from earlier proposals as it was not released in conjuncture with a tax reform bill. However, the…

That includes a drop in capital gains collections this year after they were “just through the roof” over the past two years and the likelihood that pass-through-entities would claim credits owed to them by the state, which in turn lowered how much they paid, said Doug Howgate, president of the…

Major Trends in Local Finance Municipal revenues and expenditures increased by 5.7 percent ($1.8 billion) from fiscal year (FY) 2021 to FY 2022; the highest rate of growth since FY 2007. The strong rate of growth in FY 2022 is partially the residue of the pandemic. In FY 2021, municipal resources…