SJC should let tax-cut question stay on the ballot
- Jun 2
- 1 min read
A technical objection should not deny voters the right decide whether to lower the income tax rate
By Robert Cordy
A Popular Proposal to lower the Massachusetts state income tax rate is tied up in a legal challenge at the state’s Supreme Judicial Court. The complaint is political posturing, not legal substance.
The proposal itself is straightforward: reduce the state income tax rate from 5 percent to 4 percent over the course of three years. The lawsuit challenging it was brought by labor-backed opponents who have objected to the measure from the very beginning. Their goal is to squash the proposal before it makes it to the ballot.
The lawsuit does not argue the tax cut is unconstitutional, economically unsound, or harmful to the public. Instead, the entire case rests on a technical objection to how the attorney general’s office summarized the initiative for the ballot.
The Massachusetts Constitution requires the attorney general to prepare a “fair, concise summary” of each ballot question. This summary appears on the ballot to help voters understand the main features of the proposal.
Opponents of the income tax cut claim the attorney general’s summary of the question should have explicitly stated that a secondary outcome of lowering the income tax rate would be to lower taxes on long-term capital gains income.
But neither logic nor law require ballot summaries to catalog every downstream impact of a proposal.
