In First Year, Massachusetts 'Millionaire Tax' Will Raise $1.5 Billion. Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism Still A Ways Off

Galt's Gulch not seeing surge of rich Massholes yet.

‘Kitty cats enjoying a life of Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism.’ Generated by DreamStudio AI, with a remarkably normal number of cat legs, tails, and heads.

In the 2022 midterms, Massachusetts voters approved a constitutional amendment creating a new “millionaire tax” of four percent on state residents earning over One Million Dollars. The “Fair Share Amendment” went into effect in August 2023, and now that the revenues are starting to come in, the state Department of Revenue estimates it’ll raise $1.5 billion by the end of fiscal 2024, which in Massachusetts is June 30. That crazy Bill Fiscal and his nutty calendar!

The funds will be targeted at improving infrastructure and education, paying for road and bridge repairs, bike lanes to turn everyone into a UN slave, school meals for all public school students (without even screaming at them that it’s not really “free,” just at no cost to them), and community college tuition to make kids think they’re better than their hardworking parents. OK, actually the benefits go to students aged 25 and older, and to nursing students of any age.

Karissa Hand, a spokesperson for Gov. Maura Healey, says the current state budget is already allocating Fair Share revenue, establishing

“a blueprint for how this revenue will be tracked and spent in future years on priorities in education and transportation, as directed by the voters,” Hand said.

Revenue from the tax provides $524 million in funding for education, including $71 million for early education and care; $224 million for K-12 education, and $229 million for higher education, Healey’s office said in an email.

An additional $477 million will go to transit agencies around the state like Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and others, as well as to bridge and road repairs.

As you’d expect, wealthy people and rightwing groups are crying that the tax will be the death of Massachusetts because all the rich people will simply desert the state for places with lower taxes, boo hoo. They tend not to back such claims up with much hard data, although the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, a rightwing think tank, was able to point at one example, sportsball player Grant Williams, who said the tax was one factor in his trade from the Boston Celtics to the Dallas Mavericks last year.

Yes, the group’s op-ed moaned that “Surtax proponents specifically told us things like this wouldn’t happen. That was clearly a lie.” One guy. Or maybe “hundreds of thousands” are deserting Massachusetts, but they probably weren’t all professional basketballers.

WBUR notes, however, that

Experts say it's too soon to tell how many people have left the state since the tax kicked in, and whether there's direct correlation.

But a recent report from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation found the rate of people leaving Massachusetts is at its highest point in 30 years. The report found the general work force has fallen by about 130,000 people since 2019.

Clearly members of the general work force, anticipating a tax law that might affect them if they became millionaires within the last year, left the state to avoid that. Or perhaps population shifts in the years prior to the new tax had fuck-all to do with it. You might even make a plausible case that quality of life factors like better schools and roads, or paid college tuition for nursing students, will attract workers.

But don’t be ridiculous. Little people don’t do anything for the economy. Only millionaires, and why will no one heed their plaintive cries alas?

[MassLive / WBUR]

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