Initiative for Texas Information Bulletin #1

The following column ran on page A17
of the Boston Globe on July 31, 2001:

Abolishing income tax is feasible
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Staff

Today, taking the first step toward what could be the most momentous ballot
fight in Massachusetts history, a group of small-government activists led by
two-time Libertarian Party candidate Carla Howell will file an initiative
petition to abolish the state's personal income tax. If the attorney general
approves the language and if the petitioners collect the necessary
signatures, the measure will be on the state ballot in 2002.

Fasten your seat belts. We may be in for a wild ride.

If Massachusetts voters get a chance to abolish the income tax, there will
be a din the likes of which this state has never known. Every special
interest that sups at the public trough will howl with fury, warning that an
end to the income tax will mean an end to civilization as we know it. The
schools will shut down, they will moan. The sick will die. The courts will
collapse. Bridges will buckle, the unemployed will go hungry, and every city
and town will sink into fiscal chaos. They will say, in short, that the loss
of its income tax will leave Massachusetts starved and disgraced. How can
Carla Howell possibly defend that?

Howell is the articulate Libertarian who challenged Ted Kennedy in the US
Senate race last year and drew 12 percent of the vote, nearly tying the
Republican candidate, who got 13 percent. It was a notable achievement for a
third-party candidate, especially one whose philosophy of minimal government
flies in the face of everything that liberal Taxachusetts is supposed to
favor.

Still, 12 percent is only 12 percent. Massachusetts voters may have cut
their taxes last November and voted Republican in the last three
gubernatorial elections, but it isn't exactly obvious that they want to
shrink state government radically. Howell and others who advocate an end to
the income tax will be fighting an uphill battle. Voters will be skeptical.
Opponents will be well-funded. Republican politicians no less than
Democratic ones will rush to defend the status quo. The media will trumpet
the horrors awaiting Massachusetts if the income tax goes by the boards. It
won't be an easy sell.

Even for those of us who consider taxation little better than legalized
theft, there is no denying that wiping out the income tax would take its
toll on state government. In 2000, the income tax generated more than $9
billion for the treasury - 57 percent of the state's total tax revenue of
$15.7 billion. It funded almost 41 percent of the state's $22 billion
operating budget. Critics will demand to know how Massachusetts could
survive without it. Will Howell have an answer?

Of course she will.

For a start, she can point out that seven states already manage without an
income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and
Wyoming. Two others, New Hampshire and Tennessee, tax only dividends and
interest. Beacon Hill may be addicted to income tax revenues, but addictions
aren't healthy. And as countless ex-smokers, ex-gamblers, and ex-drinkers
can testify, it is a blessing to overcome them.

No doubt Howell will make the point that state government spends so much
money because it has it, not because it needs it. The dollars gush in, so
many in recent years that the state literally hasn't been able to spend them
fast enough: Even with a budget racing far ahead of inflation, Beacon Hill
kept winding up with nine- and 10-figure surpluses. And that doesn't count
the billions stashed away, unused, in various rainy day and insurance funds.
Or the state's $7 billion share of the tobacco settlement.

Deleting the income tax from the state's fiscal calculations would not roll
us back to the 19th century. It would roll us back to 1991. Do the math:
Subtract $9 billion of income tax revenues from this year's $22 billion
budget and you are left with $13 billion. That was roughly the size of the
state's budget (in unadjusted dollars) when Michael Dukakis left office.
Many things have been said of Dukakis, but no one ever accused him of
cutting government to the bone. At $13 billion, state government was big,
powerful, intrusive, and top-heavy. Restored to $13 billion, it would still
be far from Spartan.

But it will certainly be smaller. And that, say Howell and her fellow
petitioners - who are organized as the Committee for Small Government - is
the point.

"Making state government small will make people's lives better and
happier," she told me yesterday. "$9 billion less for the state means $9
billion more for voters to spend on their priorities: their kids' education,
their churches, their retirement. It means $9 billion more for the
Massachusetts economy - and that means new businesses, new opportunities,
new jobs."

Ready or not, the mother of all ballot fights is about to begin. Better
buckle up.