Is R.I.’s ‘Taylor Swift tax’ the beginning of an era, or an error?

Politics admin July 23, 2026 0 Comments

Is R.I.’s ‘Taylor Swift tax’ the beginning of an era, or an error?

PROVIDENCE — Providence College political science Professor Adam S. Myers would not call himself a Swiftie. But he is intrigued by the “Taylor Swift tax.”

On July 1, a new law took effect in Rhode Island, boosting taxes by $2.50 for every $500 of the assessed value in excess of $1 million on non-owner-occupied houses.

Swift famously owns a $28 million, 12,657 square-foot vacation home in Westerly, so she will owe the Ocean State another $136,000 in taxes for 2026.

Myers said he will be keeping an eye on the impact of the “Taylor Swift tax” because he believes Rhode Island is the only state that has adopted such a tax, although some local governments have similar taxes.

“This is pretty interesting to me because, you know, Rhode Island is not usually known as a policy innovator,” Myers said on the Rhode Island Report podcast. “This is a situation in which we are really putting ourselves out in front and trying something out that no other state has tried out before.”

Legislators and governors in other states will be watching to see if the Taylor Swift tax emerges as a hit or mistake, he said.

Myers said he does not know if the tax will prompt the world-famous singer-songwriter to reconsider her presence, however sporadic, at “Holiday House” in Westerly’s coastal Watch Hill neighborhood.

“I have no idea what goes on in Taylor Swift’s mind,” he said. “It sounds like she’s going to have to pay another roughly $150,000 a year in property taxes as a result of this tax. That’s a drop in the bucket for her.”

Myers noted that the tax aims to generate revenue for Rhode Island’s Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Fund, which is used to build affordable housing.

“To the extent that it leads to more housing in this state that’s actually occupied by people rather than just being vacant for large parts of the year, that could be a good thing,” he said.

But he noted that opponents predict the tax will prompt wealthy people to buy vacation homes in other states, such as Connecticut, that haven’t adopted this kind of tax. And opponents say the tax is part of a larger problem hampering the state’s competitiveness.

In addition to the “Taylor Swift tax,” Rhode Island this year began phasing in a millionaires tax, which will raise the tax rate on personal income of more than $1 million over three years — going to 6.99 percent for tax year 2027, 7.99 percent for 2028, and 8.99 percent for 2029. That is expected to generate an estimated $22.4 million in 2027 and $142 million by 2030.

Myers said those two new taxes are examples of the kind of tax policy that many blue states are pursuing, targeting “the wealthiest of the wealthy.” At the same time, he said, many red states are slashing tax rates, hoping to lure businesses and jobs from other states.

Myers examines the history and consequences of this “polarization of state tax policy” in his new book, “Coordination Failure: State Taxation and National Response from the New Deal to Today.”

The United States did not have this kind of divergent tax policy 50 or 60 years ago, he said. But that began to change in the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan said in his inaugural address, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Republicans began to become identified with shrinking government and cutting taxes, Myers said, but it took a while for that philosophy to find its way to the state level.

Eventually, state tax policies became “a core driver of economic competition and political warfare between the states,” he said.

The book notes that Jim Justice, a former West Virginia governor now in the US Senate, once said, “The more we lower the taxes, the more people will come. That’s all there is to it.”

But Myers said that’s not necessarily the case.

“I call that a highly unrealistic claim,” he said. “There’s a lot of reasons why West Virginia has been an economically depressed state for a long time, and simply cutting its taxes is not going to change that.”

Some states have a lot more wealth to tax than others, Myers said.

“The best way to find revenue is to go where the money is,” he said. “There aren’t that many wealthy people in Mississippi and West Virginia, and there’s a lot of wealthy people in Massachusetts and Connecticut and California.”

Myer said Hasbro’s decision to move from Pawtucket, R.I., to Boston shows that tax policy is not the only factor that companies factor into decisions about where to locate.

“Had Hasbro been solely focused on tax policy, it wouldn’t have moved from one relatively high-tax state, Rhode Island, to another relatively high-tax state, Massachusetts,” Myers said, noting both states now have a millionaires tax. “It would have relocated to Florida or Texas, states that are relatively low tax.”

The Rhode Island Report podcast is produced by The Boston Globe Rhode Island. To get the latest episode each week, follow the Rhode Island Report podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcasting platforms, or listen in the player above.