Sometimes on Beacon Hill you just can’t keep a bad idea down. And so it is with the latest proposal to force Massachusetts nonprofits to begin paying property taxes.
Rep. David Nangle (D-Lowell) has filed a bill that would allow cities and towns the option of taxing nonprofits, or at least the ones that pay their employees big salaries.
“Cities and towns are always looking for additional assistance to help them meet their budgetary needs,” Nangle told the Lowell Sun. “The largest nonprofits could and should be the perfect partner to accomplish this.”
Translation: Cities and towns need money — and big nonprofits have money — so why shouldn’t they be forced by state and local governments to turn more of it over?
Nangle isn’t the only elected official who sees gold in the currently tax-exempt hills.
In Boston, for example, under a program launched by his predecessor, Mayor Marty Walsh annually sends an invoice to nonprofits for the amount the city has decided they should pay in lieu of property taxes. It’s no longer a negotiation — just a bill in the mail. When those organizations, which are generally exempt from the property tax, pay less than the amount “owed” then they are widely reported to have “fallen short” in their obligation.
It amounts to a polite extortion scheme, and it appears others want to get in on the action.
Nangle filed a similar measure last session but received blowback over the possible impact on churches, food pantries, homeless shelters and the like. So he has cooked up a way to charge only the really rich guys — the hospitals and universities, whose missions are apparently not so charitable that they shouldn’t be forced to fork over more of their revenue to the communities where they fulfill that mission.
A nonprofit would pay property taxes if the combined compensation of its five highest-paid employees exceeds $2.5 million. That those institutions are more likely to have valuable property that will generate the most revenue is surely just a happy coincidence.
Nangle’s bill last session died in committee. This one ought to do the same.
