Because the Bay State’s emergency shelter invoice hovers close to $1 billion for an additional yr, and Beacon Hill seems to be 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 system 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, in accordance with a directive from Income Commissioner Geoffrey Snyder. Meaning cable bins which have DVR skills or different options like the flexibility to hook up with common streaming companies are actually topic to the tax.
They have 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 have been deemed to suit right into a statutory exemption for issues “consumed or used instantly and completely … within the operation of economic … tv transmission.”
Now, nonetheless, Cable TV is shedding floor to streaming platforms and packages, and so-called sensible TVs make it easy to surf the web with a clicker.
Know-how adjustments, TV and the best way 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 applications we entry which can be totally different.
What this money seize will do, after all, is give customers who have been on the lookout for a motive to chop the cable wire a last motive to take action.
Increasingly more customers, fed up with excessive cable costs, have parted firm with cable. Based on Selection citing Nielsen knowledge, in 2024, there have been solely three cable networks that averaged a couple of million viewers in prime time, Fox Information, ESPN and MSNBC. They have been additionally the one three cable networks to amass a median 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 companies are common, and worthwhile, and Massachusetts desires 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 Fireplace TV Stick or Apple TV units customers as much as subscribe to stay TV streaming companies of alternative, resembling Hulu, YouTube TV and extra. The on-demand choices are plentiful.
The state has given Massachusetts customers a alternative: pay a better 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 underneath the wheels. Aged and lower-income viewers who don’t have sensible TVs, Fireplace Sticks or any of the opposite higher-tech choices are caught. Even when they lower down on their channel bundle to save cash, they’ll nonetheless be hit with that new tax.
For state leaders who purport to care concerning the non-rich, it is a unhealthy transfer.
Massachusetts lawmakers ought to regroup, and tune out the cable tax.
