To the editor:

Three weeks ago, I wrote a letter explaining how simple 4th grade math indicates that Rhode Island’s misguided efforts to “punish” wealthy residents by imposing the “Taylor Swift tax” on those who don’t reside here throughout the year and then, to add insult to injury, to impose a “millionaire’s tax” championed by Governor Dan McKee and his Democratic opponent, Helena Foulkes, makes no financial sense.
Strangely, one person, whom I met once, a few years ago shortly after she moved to Bristol, made two false claims about me while writing in opposition.

She claimed that I am a real estate developer (I am not — I spent many years working for a bank, running investor relations, then financing commercial real estate development. Later, I ran two software companies and then worked as a senior consultant for a financial consulting company doing profit improvement projects at top 10 banks).

She also said that I had objected to enforcing the 20% affordable housing rule for at least two Bristol developments at public hearings, which is also untrue.

I sat on the Bristol Zoning Board of Review for many years and anyone who actually knows me, knows that I believe that every community should strive to provide housing for every economic tier of its population.

The point I made, and want to reinforce, is that charging seasonal residents of Rhode Island higher property taxes, makes no financial sense and may in fact be illegal, given that they don’t vote in the state.
Secondly, if you run the numbers on real estate taxes paid on properties vs. services used by residents, seasonal residents are Rhode Island’s most profitable real estate taxpayers given they don’t have children in our schools.

Other states, such as Massachusetts and California, have found that punitive taxes against wealthy people backfire; those residents often leave the state to become residents of a lower-tax state. Massachusetts has seen a net migration of people leaving the state since the tax was enacted with a net outflow of more than 30,000 people in 2025.
A SmartAsset analysis of 2022 IRS data, from before the Massachusetts 4% surcharge on income over $1 million tax, found that households earning $200,000 or more were most likely to move to Florida, Texas, the Carolinas, and New Hampshire.

Massachusetts ranked fourth among states for the largest net loss of high-income households, with a net loss of just over 4,000 households, behind California, New York, and Illinois.

“Massachusetts has been seeing a drop, especially in millionaires, in the last several years,” Janelle Fritts, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation said.

“On average, you’re seeing (more) lower-income folks coming in than were going out,” said Fritts.

As Margaret Thatcher, the conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who inherited a vastly increased welfare state after years of Labour dominance in England, once said, “"the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."

She viewed socialism and an overly-reliant welfare state as a threat to personal freedom and economic reality.

I agree with Margaret Thatcher.

Georgina Macdonald
Middletown