Here's where all the money went. Excellent Steve Bailey column in today's Globe in which he argues that it's time to take back some of the hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate-tax giveaways that were waved through the State House during the 1990s. A sickening excerpt:

The Massachusetts corporate income tax has fallen from more than 16 percent of total state tax revenue in 1968 to just 4 percent in 2002. The sales and the corporate taxes generated roughly the same revenue in 1968; today the sales tax amounts to six times the corporate income tax. The personal income tax, which generated about twice the corporate tax three decades ago, today yields 13 times the corporate tax. The Revenue Department estimated last February that eight changes in the corporate tax law to the Raytheons, Fidelitys, and others will reduce state revenue by $382 million next fiscal year.

Bailey reports that Governor Mitt Romney is off to a better start in closing some of these loopholes than one might have suspected, having submitted proposals that would bring in $130 million to $180 million a year if they're passed by the legislature.

Click here (PDF file) for the executive summary of the report by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center on which Bailey based some of his findings.