Massachusetts's Millionaire Tax Still Going Very Well, Thank You!

And the millionaires aren't going anywhere, for the most part.

Oct 23, 2025

Last May, we were very happy to report that the Millionaire Tax instituted in the state of Massachusetts was working out very well, not scaring off all of the rich people, and raising funds for necessary education and transportation initiatives. The state had raised $1.8 billion — $800 million more than they predicted — and none of the terrible things the naysayers had predicted happened at all.

But how are things going a year later? Even better! The tax has now generated $3 billion more than expected, for a total of $5.7 billion that has been spent on projects that are positively benefiting Massachusetts residents and “being used to bridge repairs, bolster literacy programs and address the transportation system’s budget deficit.”

In case you need a refresher, the tax is a 4 percent tax on anything people make over a million dollars.

Yes. One million dollars. This means that if you make $1,100,000, they will be taxed a whopping $4,000 extra. That’s like, a single Chanel bag. They can deal — and deal they have! Most of them, anyway.

Bloomberg reports that, although many millionaires (who still haven’t left) have been pushing for ballot measures to end it, some are actually pretty okay with the situation.

“At the end of the day, I happen to believe it’s a phenomenal place to live,” said Sam Slater, a real estate developer who lives in the Boston suburb of Weston and pays the millionaire’s tax. […]
[H]e’s staying put. His family has roots in the region, and they also like Boston’s culture, sports teams and seasons, Slater said.
Josh Isner, president of taser manufacturer Axon Enterprise Inc., said the millionaire’s tax makes it harder to recruit talent — particularly well-paid artificial intelligence specialists — to the Northeast hub the company opened in Boston last year. But the office is based in the city because “Boston breeds super-talented people,” he said earlier this year.

But they did find one guy who split! Robert Reynolds, 73, the former chief executive officer of Putnam Investments, has moved down to Florida, citing the millionaire tax and the Massachusetts estate tax as a concern. Other people, of course, might just call that “retiring” after the company you work for is acquired by another company. According to an admittedly sketchy-seeming website that I’m not going to link to because no one needs that many pop-ups, Reynolds has a net worth of $319 million.

My heart is not exactly breaking for him and the 4 percent tax he would have to pay on any money he’d make over $1 million. I think he’d be okay, personally!

The fact that the state generated more money in the second year of its Millionaire Tax implementation than in the first suggests that not too many people have gone the way of Bob Reynolds — even if, according to him, he hasn’t “been to one meeting in Boston since this passed where there haven’t been a number of people saying that they’re moving out of the state.”

Sure, people complain. Rich people are always going to complain about taxes. But they never flee the way they threaten to, largely because whether or not they like to admit it, they prefer to live in the kinds of areas where things are made nicer by the taxes they don’t want to pay.

One of the biggest things that the “low tax” hysterics refuse to (or pretend not to) get is that there is a reason why rich people and big corporations are still centered in higher tax areas — and it’s because, really, what good is money if you can’t actually do much of anything with it?

Sure, there are some people who like the idea of living out in the middle of nowhere, on a ranch, with nature. There are guys in their 70s who want to just move to Florida and play golf (though they almost always live in gated communities there with enormous HOA fees that serve a similar purpose as taxes). But, clearly, a whole lot more people like living in places where there are things to do. For especially rich people, they want to be able to spend some money on nice dinners, on fashion that people are actually going to see and appreciate, on cultural activities, on events. They want to be able to send their kids to a good school, public or private. This usually entails living at least somewhat near a city, and very frequently in a “blue” state.

It’s not just rich people, either. Many of the comedians who followed Joe Rogan to Austin now regret the move because, well, there’s not enough for them to do and power grid failures aren’t as much fun as we guessed they thought they’d be.

Corporations need to be situated near good colleges they can pluck from, where a lot of talent is located. Sure, they could move to a state with extremely low taxes and hope that other people will move along with them, but they’ll be cutting their talent pool by a lot. People who don’t have kids aren’t going to want to move to places where there isn’t anything to do, and smart people who have kids don’t want said kids learning all about how Jesus rode dinosaurs or being taught by random military personnel (or their spouses!) who haven’t even completed a Bachelor’s degree, because so few actual teachers actually want to live in their state. I think even successful people who lean conservative and might want those things for other people’s children still want their own kids to be competitive.

This is why rich people aren’t going to flee New York City if Zohran Mamdani institutes something similar. There are people living in walk-in closets just to get to live there — I’m pretty certain that there are rich folks who will be willing to deal with an imperceptible tax increase to do the same. We are talking about people who pay $50,000 a year for preschool. They will manage.

And it’s worth noting that, if they can’t, it’s hardly as though there are not people willing and able to step up and take their places and make just a pinch less than a bajillion dollars a year. Because there are. Lots of them.

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It’s also why they aren’t going to flee the United States if Elizabeth Warren gets her way and a similar tax is implemented nationwide. Pretty much any other place they’d want to live would have higher taxes. The places with the highest quality of life in the world also tend to be the places with the highest taxes, and that is not a coincidence. You get what you pay for.

But it’s not just about how the millionaires and billionaires feel. It’s about how everyone else feels, and 58 percent of the country would like to see taxes raised on those making more than $400,000 a year — including 23 percent who say they should be raised a lot. Sixty-three percent say they want to see taxes raised on corporations.

Hell, 43 percent of Republicans say that taxes on these groups should be raised.

Maybe we could have nice things after all?

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