Because the Bay State’s emergency shelter invoice hovers close to $1 billion for one more 12 months, and Beacon Hill seems at spending boosts within the FY26 price range, Massachusetts is hitting customers with a brand new tax.
What a coincidence.
As State Home Information reported, the sale or rental of any cable field gadget that “can do greater than join a cable system to a TV broadcast receiver, and permit for parental controls” is not exempt from the state’s 6.25% gross sales tax, based on a directive from Income Commissioner Geoffrey Snyder. Meaning cable bins which have DVR talents or different options like the flexibility to connect with fashionable streaming providers at the moment are topic to the tax.
They had been exempt in 2008, when DOR issued a directive declaring “gross sales and leases of cable tv converter bins to Massachusetts cable tv prospects are exempt from gross sales and use taxes” as a result of they had been deemed to suit right into a statutory exemption for issues “consumed or used straight and completely … within the operation of business … tv transmission.”
Now, nonetheless, Cable TV is shedding floor to streaming platforms and packages, and so-called good TVs make it easy to surf the web with a clicker.
Expertise modifications, TV and the way in which we watch it has modified. However why ought to a tax exemption be misplaced due to viewing habits? The converter bins, set-top bins and cable system terminal units are the identical, it’s simply the packages we entry which can be totally different.
What this money seize will do, in fact, is give customers who had been on the lookout for a purpose to chop the cable wire a closing purpose to take action.
Increasingly customers, fed up with excessive cable costs, have parted firm with cable. In keeping with Selection citing Nielsen information, in 2024, there have been solely three cable networks that averaged multiple million viewers in prime time, Fox Information, ESPN and MSNBC. They had been additionally the one three cable networks to amass a mean viewers of over a million prime time viewers in 2023. By comparability, in 2014, there have been 19 cable networks that had surpassed the a million viewers threshold.
Streaming providers are fashionable, and worthwhile, and Massachusetts needs in on the income. However these eager on including to state coffers appear to have missed the truth that you possibly can watch streaming TV with out cable. A wise TV, Roku, Amazon Hearth TV Stick or Apple TV units customers as much as subscribe to dwell TV streaming providers of selection, comparable to Hulu, YouTube TV and extra. The on-demand choices are plentiful.
The state has given Massachusetts customers a selection: pay the next tax, or ditch cable.
In the event that they select the latter, the tax goes with it.
However as with all sweeping tax transfer, there are those that get caught below the wheels. Aged and lower-income viewers who don’t have good TVs, Hearth Sticks or any of the opposite higher-tech choices are caught. Even when they lower down on their channel bundle to economize, they’ll nonetheless be hit with that new tax.
For state leaders who purport to care concerning the non-rich, this can be a dangerous transfer.
Massachusetts lawmakers ought to regroup, and tune out the cable tax.
