Lawsuit takes aim at tax question

Opponents of an initiative petition that lowers the income tax rate from 5% to 4% over three years filed a lawsuit Thursday with the Supreme Judicial Court that claims Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s summary of the proposal was so flawed and unfair that the measure should be disqualified from further consideration.

The state constitution requires the attorney general to prepare a “fair, concise summary” of the measure proposed. The tax cut question summary appeared near the top of the petition papers that question supporters used during the fall to gather thousands of voter signatures needed to secure ballot access.

The summary prepared by the office of Campbell, a Democrat who is seeking reelection, states in part that the proposal would “lower the tax rates on (1) personal taxable income consisting of interest and dividends, and (2) personal taxable income other than interest, dividends or capital gain income, such as wages and salaries.”

The plaintiffs assert that that portion of the summary is “fundamentally unfair,” inaccurate and misleading because it only makes references to income from interest and dividends and wages and salaries, and fails to make clear that the tax reduction would apply to long-term capital gains income.

The lawsuit further alleges that the summary compounds the omission of the proposal’s application to long-term capital gains “by erroneously asserting that ‘capital gain income’ is affirmatively excluded from the proposed tax rate reductions.”