New Hampshire’s retirees are facing a spooky prospect this Halloween season: the threat of the undead rising in the form of the vampiric interest and dividend tax that had been thought to have been extinguished with a stake through the heart. This tax is scheduled to be phased out at the end of this year, but Joyce Craig now advocates bringing it back. More than anyone else, it is retirees, of course, who rely on interest and dividend income. The interest and dividend tax can thus rightly be called the “Retiree Tax.”

This income is no more “passively” generated than the effort and savings that were put into accumulating the sources. With an original rate of 5 percent and exclusion for single seniors of $3,600, this tax extracted more from New Hampshire retirees than income tax would extract from a senior in Massachusetts, which has a 5 percent rate and $5,100 exclusion for seniors. You might have thought that it would have been a cold day in the tax collector’s inferno when it would be rational for New Hampshire seniors to seek refuge in Massachusetts for lower taxes, but if Joyce Craig gets her way, a cold day it will be.

Jonathan F. Mack

Hampton