Carla A. Howell is an Americanpolitical activist, small government advocate, and singer/songwriter. She is most known for organizing tax cut initiative petitions in Massachusetts. She spearheaded an initiative to repeal the Massachusetts statepersonal income tax in 2002 and again in 2008 and one to cut the state sales tax in 2010. She ran for office in Massachusetts for U.S. Senate, Governor, and State Auditor on the Libertarian Party ticket. She served on the staff of the Libertarian National Committee from December 2011 until June 2017. In 2010 she headed the Alliance to Roll Back Taxes, sponsor of a ballot initiative to cut the Massachusetts sales tax from 6.25% to 3.0% which was on the November 2, 2010 ballot as Question 3. Her group collected and submitted 74,131 approved voter signatures in the fall of 2009, and another 14,023 signatures in the spring-summer of 2010 to qualify the measure. Carla Howell starting releasing new original songs, which she wrote, sang, and recorded, in November 2019. Most of her songs have a libertarian theme. Yak Yak Bourbon draws parallels between the Alcohol and Drug Prohibitions. Good Folks is about the good people who use guns for the defense of themselves and others. In 2001, she released her parody song How Could I Live Without Filing Taxes. She earned her MBA from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Bethany College in Mathematics/Computer Science. She worked at Datamedic, Clinical Information Advantages, Inc., Westinghouse Electric, Computervision Corporation, and Analog Devices, and consulted for numerous small and medium-sized businesses in Massachusetts.
2008 Statewide Ballot Question 1. In 2007, she, along with fellow co-chair Michael Cloud, re-formed the Committee For Small Government. The Committee obtained enough petition signatures to put the issue on the ballot. The 2008 initiative differed from the 2002 initiative in that it provided a one-year transition period with a tax rate of 2.65% before the tax rate would drop to zero. This measure received a higher vote total than in 2002, but lost with 30% of the vote, due to higher turn-out in presidential election years when an additional 500,000 voters, mostly Democratic, turn out to vote, as well as a $7 million campaign opposing the measure, funded primarily by the Massachusetts Teachers Association.
In September 2009 Howell proposed a ballot initiative for the 2010 ballot to roll back the Massachusetts sales tax from 6.25% to 3%. The measure reached as high as 56% in the polls, but fell short after a $4.5 million advertising campaign and an unprecedented get-out-the-vote effort by the opposition.
