Massachusetts & Oregon Have the Most Aggressive Tax, Hurting Families, Businesses, Charities and Farmers

Since Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance was established in 2012, the organization has offered testimony before each legislative session to advocate for the abolition of the state’s Estate Tax, commonly referred to as the Death Tax. During that time, our country has seen several other states eliminate their tax completely or modify it to be significantly less aggressive. The federal government has even taken steps to be less harmful to taxpayers. Some blue east coast states, such as President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, have even completely eliminated the tax all together. A copy of MassFiscal’s testimony before the Joint Committee on Revenue may be found by clicking here.

“The only way to attract more people to migrate to Massachusetts is by creating a business and resident friendly tax climate and the only way to keep people here is by abolishing the estate tax,” stated Paul Diego Craney, spokesman for the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. “The estate tax tears apart families, businesses, and farms. It cools off charitable giving. It absolutely causes people, their families, and their wealth to leave our state. By Massachusetts insisting that it keep the country’s most aggressive tax, its skipping over the dollar to collect a dime.”  

“Massachusetts farmers are not typically thought of as millionaires but the state’s estate tax treats them that way. The oldest business in Massachusetts is a farm. Farms often sell off land in order to pay the estate tax and keep the farm in the family. Massachusetts once had a thriving dairy farm industry and now the state only has one organic dairy farm left. For our state’s robust cranberry farmers, we cannot let their fate be the same fate of our dairy farmers. If our state wants to promote agriculture and family farms, it must abolish the estate tax,” concluded Craney.