by Jon Hurst, RAM President

As Massachusetts voters head to the polls next week, they will be voting on five ballot questions which seek to pass new laws in the Commonwealth. As voted by our Board of Directors, two of those questions—Questions 2 and 5—are being opposed by the Retailers Association of Massachusetts (RAM). RAM urges our members, their employees, families, friends and neighbors to vote NO on 2 and 5.

The common denominator of these two questions is that they are both counterproductive for the future of those residents most directly affected—our high school students and tipped service workers. The other interesting connection between the two questions is that they are being pushed by the deep pockets of special interest groups, one from here in Massachusetts, and the other an out of state national lobbying interest group.

Originally published in CommonWealth Magazine on June 18, 2022

by Jon B. Hurst, RAM President

A few of us are old enough to remember the last severe bout with inflation four decades ago. My first mortgage right out of college was a whopping 12 5/8 percent. Gas and food prices were through the roof, and families fell further and further behind despite rising wages. In many ways the picture is as bad, or even worse, today. Energy prices and consumer essentials are far higher, interest rate increases are far from over, and the plunging stock market has become more important due to individualized retirement plans like 401ks.

Yet, while inflation is hammering consumers and small businesses, government has never had it so good, with revenues driven by pandemic federal dollars; and tax receipts such as sales, income, and property taxes all driven far higher with consumer goods, wages, and property value increases.

Beacon Hill recently passed legislation which was billed as a fix for the $7 billion unemployment insurance crisis.  It was the second such bill passed in two months.  Yet employers are still waiting for government to step up with shared responsibility by making a fair down payment on the unprecedented employer tax increase for COVID layoffs triggered by public policy.

October 22, 2020 by Jon B. Hurst, President

Come January, countless small business owners will review their receipts and expenses and decide if they can stay open. They will be making that heart wrenching decision at a time of great uncertainty. Can they take the risk that they can bring consumers back into their stores and restaurants and drive up sales to cover their expenses, or are the costs of operating just too much?

The popular image of Main Street America is familiar and welcoming: charming storefronts, restaurants with brightly colored awnings, old-school pharmacies, newer cafes, coffee shops, shoe repairs and more. Those small businesses make up a large part of America’s cultural history and its modern economy. Jon Hurst, President of the century-old Retailers Association of Massachusetts sees an even more powerful tradition at play in those mom-and-pop shops. 

“Historically, it’s been the go-to industry for entrepreneurs. Maybe you worked for a large company, but always had a dream of opening your small business, employing people, and serving customers,” Hurst says. That tradition of bootstrap entrepreneurs chasing their dreams and creating local jobs is alive and well in America today. According to the Small Business Administration’s most recent survey results, U.S. small businesses created 1.9 million net jobs in the span of a year, and firms employing fewer than 20 employees experienced the largest gains, adding 1.1 million net jobs.

February 26, 2019 by Jon Hurst, RAM President

When it comes to health care in Massachusetts, there’s good news and bad news. The good news? The state recently announced that individuals who buy health care through the Health Connector, our health care exchange, pay the second lowest premiums in the country. The bad news? According to the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission, small businesses and their employees in the state have the second highest premiums in the country.

January 2, 2019 by Jon Hurst, President

As we celebrate the New Year and look optimistically at the future, many small business owners are facing 2019 with fear for their profitability, given new state payroll mandates on wages and paid leave.

September 24, 2018  by Jon Hurst, President

Recently, the Massachusetts Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) presented their 2018 Annual Report. The report was widely reported in the press for showing much slower overall growth in healthcare spending: 1.6% vs. the state’s 3.1% benchmark, and recent 4 year average of 3.6% increases. Yet, totally missed by the press and general public was how the increased costs were disparately distributed among a wide variety of consumers. Dissecting how the overall healthcare “pie” is divided is extremely important for small businesses, as important questions remain whether costs are being fairly distributed across all classes of purchasers.

August 7, 2018 By Jon Hurst, President

The so-called “Grand Bargain” was signed into law in late June, and with its’ passage, three initiatives were kept off the November ballot.  One question was RAM’s rollback of the sales tax; and the other two were the $15 minimum wage and the paid family and medical leave payroll mandates. 

Make no mistake about it—without the existence of RAM’s sales tax initiative, the political pressure to remove these two costly labor mandates from the ballot would never have occurred.  The sales tax ballot initiative created the environment and the leverage to move closer to middle ground through compromise, rather than facing near certain voter passage of the labor initiatives.  Neither the Legislature nor the advocates pressing the labor mandates wanted to see a sales tax rollback with a $1 Billion price tag. 

June 22, 2018 BY JON HURST

This week, after 20 years of RAM work on sales tax fairness, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the future of our Main Streets by overturning the 1992 Quill decision on remote seller tax collection and remittance.  The South Dakota v Wayfair decision is important and welcomed as it will seek to end unequal application of state government imposed sales taxes.  Here in Massachusetts, we have always had the “New Hampshire problem,” but we also have a very tech savvy consumer, all too likely to send their vital discretionary dollars out of our local economy, to tax free sellers easily found right on their smart phones.  Thus for many years, local stores have had two strikes against them as tax free competitors have proliferated. 

May 29, 2018 by Jon Hurst, President

As RAM members know, your association has been working for almost a year to qualify a ballot initiative to roll back the sales tax to the 5% rate last seen in 2009. The measure also authorizes an annual two day sales tax holiday.
Sufficient signatures have been obtained to file with the Secretary of State by the July 3rd deadline to qualify the measure for the November ballot. But important negotiations are underway on Beacon Hill with various ballot measure sponsors in order to achieve middle ground and avoid the questions being placed before the voters. Besides the sales tax question, two payroll mandate proposals are being negotiated: the initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15 over 4 years, and another initiative to create the most costly and extensive paid family and medical leave mandate in the country.
Complicating the negotiations are pending court cases on whether a constitutional amendment to increase the state income tax by 4% for those persons earning $1 Million or more will reach the November ballot. That case is before the MA Supreme Judicial Court. And before the US Supreme Court is the landmark case on whether states can mandate out of state internet sellers to collect the sales tax from local consumers (SD vs Wayfair).
Whether RAM moves forward with the ballot question on the sales tax rollback will be based on a combination of the outcome of those court cases; as well as on the ability of negotiations to produce more reasonable payroll mandate measures; while still giving taxpayers and local small businesses some sales tax relief to incent local consumer spending rather than driving purchases to NH or to Silicon Valley.
In case we do move forward with the sales tax ballot question, investments are being made for a campaign. The 10,792 required voter signatures for the second round of qualification have been obtained and will be held for potential filing. In addition, the Beacon Hill Institute has completed a study which confirms the economic benefits of lowering the sales tax—particularly for lower income consumers and our small businesses—as well as the fact that the tax loss is far less than what opponents might suggest due to increased local investment and jobs.
What links the high and avoidable sales tax and the proposed costly state labor mandates together is that both make it harder for local sellers to attract and retain local consumer spending due to the resulting and obvious higher customer prices.
In the age of the smart phone, we must all adapt. That includes our existing and proposed laws under the purview of our public policy leaders--who are all very quick to say they support small businesses and our Main Streets. To have laws which make local consumer prices far higher than our competitors, whether through a high sales tax or through unaffordable payroll mandates, is simply antiquated, unacceptable and counterproductive state economic policy. In the 21st Century, that fact is certainly crystal clear to anyone that has ever worked to make a payroll, and to attract consumers armed with unlimited spending options.
More than ever, the employer community, labor, and elected officials should all be working together to keep consumer spending--which is 70% of our economy—right here in Massachusetts. The next few weeks will be telling as to whether that cooperation can and will happen.

October 24, 2107  By Jon Hurst, President

The Retailers Association of Massachusetts has been investing considerable time and resources this fall to qualify a ballot initiative to reduce the sales tax rate back to the 2009 level of 5.0%, as well as to authorize an annual August two day sales tax holiday.  Our membership polling clearly showed overwhelming support for the Association to take this rare step.  As an industry, we have not used the ballot initiative mechanism since 1994, when the voters approved a RAM sponsored measure to make Massachusetts the last state in the nation to allow stores to open on Sunday mornings, and on the three summer national holidays. 

October 11, 2017  by Ryan Kearney

Massachusetts Senate leadership recently released a criminal justice reform package which seeks an eighty-four percent increase in the felony threshold for the crimes of larceny and credit card fraud—from the current level of $250 up to $1,500. An increase of this size would be detrimental to the ability of retailers, law enforcement and prosecutors to protect against theft and essentially results in dramatic raises and incentives for professional criminals operating in the Commonwealth.

As the fiscal year 2018 state budget gets closer to implementation on July 1, it is becoming clearer that employers will be asked in some way to help fund a state Medicaid budget gap.  The MassHealth budget has exploded under a combination of ACA related costs, mixed up consumer incentives, and a lack of provider expense control.  And until the state can institute some guardrails, and move some over to more appropriate and affordable options, it appears that employers will be asked to fund some of the increased costs over a two year period. 

Important discussions on the economic impact to small businesses have lowered the dollar ask and have allowed for discussions of better taxing plans, but still absent from the negotiations is skin in the game from the providers themselves.  A proposal to cap commercial rate increases for the big, high cost providers was lost in the flood of unparalleled political power by “non-profit,” non-taxpaying healthcare providers.   They aren’t shy about asking for more money from consumers, employers and taxpayers, but ask them to pay taxes or reduce their expenses, and they pull out all the stops to deflect the conversation.

April 28, 2017 by Jon Hurst

"Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax the fellow behind the tree;” so said former Louisiana Senator Russell B. Long when describing “tax reform.”  This is a pretty clear description of the political process behind tax debates at the state and federal levels.  And this message is worth keeping in mind as we face major tax changes and debates over the next year on Capitol Hill concerning the Border Adjustment Tax; and on Beacon Hill and the state ballot on the so-called Millionaires Tax.

By Jon Hurst, President 

The Retailers Association of Massachusetts recently conducted public opinion polls by Princeton Research Associates to determine the views of voters and consumers in the Commonwealth about the state sales tax and about the fairness alternatives.  The results are interesting.  Following are the highlights.

March 20, 2017 by Bill Rennie

Much has been said and written about Governor Baker’s $300 million employer Medicaid tax proposal, which when fully annualized over the course of the year projects out to more than a $600 million tax increase on employers, and rightly so, as that is a big number.  Less attention has been paid to another proposal in the budget that is also meant to generate significant revenue from employers by adopting what the Governor describes as a “Sales Tax Modernization Timing Change,” more commonly referred to as “real-time” sales tax collection.  The Administration counts on this change to bring in $125 million in the next fiscal year – another big number.  However, like the proposed Medicaid tax, the “real-time” proposal is flawed.