Issue Position: Taxes

Issue Position

Through the State and Federal designations we give certain entities tax free status because they are deemed to be "a community benefit". It seems logical to me that something that would be a real and direct benefit to the community would be a program that created incentives for ordinary people to improve their properties much as we do for large companies like Bose or Staples with our TIF program (tax incentive financing). A program for smaller properties would typically employ small business local contactors who, in turn, would mostly buy their supplies locally- thus energizing the local economy. The program should have a cap on the assessed value of the properties… perhaps $500,000 for residences and $2,000,000 for commercial properties. The intent would be to create incentives for whole neighborhoods to improve their properties and thus bring up the value of an area as a whole. The program would work when an owner spent the money to upgrade their property causing the assessment to rise. Instead of the current system where the owner would then have to spend yet more money to cover the new higher assessment, the first year tax bill would have a credit for the amount the property assessment went up. The second year the tax bill would have a credit for ½ the additional assessment; the third would be the original assessment. In the fourth and then fifth years the assessment would be plus ½ and then the full new valuation. Presently there is little incentive for owners to spend to upgrade when they know the assessments will rise and many neighborhoods reflect that thinking. With incentives to "do the right thing" we will see a new attitude, because it makes economic sense as well as "community sense".

I would, as a State Representative, work to create innovative enabling legislation such as this to build incentives into our current regressive and punitive system.

2 years ago in this space I advocated for the creating of a MetroWest Bureau of Tourism. I was irritated by taxes collected here in Framingham going to Boston and disappearing like so many of our resources do. I am thrilled by the inclusion of that idea in the new economic development legislation as crafted, supported and successfully passed into reality by Senator Karen Spilka and her team. It is an excellent law that will be an important addition to the region and I applaud the hard work that went into making the idea a reality.

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