ByMarch 20, 2026
It’s the million-dollar question: Is Massachusetts’ surtax on high-earners, which kicked in three years ago, driving residents away?
It depends on who you ask, even after the Internal Revenue Service released on Thursday the most detailed look yet on who, exactly, left the state as the so-called millionaires tax took effect.
The IRS data found that nearly 30,000 more people left Massachusetts than came into it from 2022 to 2023, according to tax returns — one of the highest numbers of any state in the country. Those departures represented a net loss of about $4.2 billion in adjusted gross income. That’s actually fewer people than left in the prior year — about 45,000 individuals, on balance, moved out in 2021-2022 — but the lost income was up from a net of $3.9 billion.
Meanwhile, within the highest-earning bracket — those earning $200,000 or more — 8,676 more individuals left the state than came into it from 2022 to 2023, representing around 29 percent of the total net loss. Compare that to the 9,735 top earners who left, on balance, in 2021-2022, comprising about 22 percent of the net loss. Individuals who earned $200,000 or more and left Massachusetts in 2022-2023 amounted to about 2.1 percent of the total population of the highest earners who came into Massachusetts, those who left, those who moved within the state, and those who stayed put. That was a slight decrease from the 2021-2022 figure of 2.5 percent.
MassBudget Reference:
The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center reads the numbers differently. The progressive think tank pointed to the shrinking net loss of $200,000-and-over households leaving the state as a sign that the wealthiest residents are not the ones bearing the brunt of the state’s economic squeeze.
“To the extent that economics play a role, for these households that are leaving, it’s questions of affordability, about housing, affordability of education, affordability of child care, affordability of transportation,” said Kurt Wise, a senior policy analyst at MassBudget. “Those are the economic factors weighing on these households, which might push them to look for opportunities outside of Massachusetts.”
Phineas Baxandall, the director of research and policy analysis at MassBudget, also pointed out that early estimates of surtax collections for the current fiscal year show the state is on track to collect even more this fiscal year than the last one.
“The proof in the pudding is the money that’s actually coming in,” Baxandall said. “If the millionaires were leaving, they wouldn’t be continuing, quarter to quarter, to pay this tax.”
