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Three Funds, One Purpose: Implementing Fair Share
The Fiscal Year 2024 budget is the first state budget to include money raised from the Fair Share Amendment, making important investments in education and transportation. Lawmakers took additional steps to create mechanisms that will facilitate transparency, stability, and protect the intent of the amendment.
Your Fair Share Dollars at Work: Critical Investments and Hard Choices
The Fair Share Amendment is doing what voters wanted it to do: making new, important investments in our Commonwealth and making our tax system more equitable.
Statement by MassBudget on the FY2024 Budget
Today the legislature passed a budget bill for Fiscal Year 2024. The $56.26 billion budget now goes to Governor Healey. Enabled by new revenue from the Fair Share Amendment that the voters passed last November, the FY2024 budget makes important investments in education and transportation.
ALL BUDGET RESOURCES REPORTS
Final Tax Package Can Improve Tax Fairness & Help Build Toward Shared Prosperity
Currently, a conference committee is working on a compromise tax package between the House’s and Senate’s proposals. The fairest tax package would be one that delivers its benefits overwhelmingly to low- and middle-income households and which greatly limits tax cuts for very high-income and wealthy households.
State-Level Child Tax Credits are Having a Moment in the Sun: Will Massachusetts Families be Left in the Dark?
The Massachusetts legislature is considering creating the Child and Family Tax Credit (CFTC), a refundable tax credit for families with children and adult dependents. It is important for our elected officials to choose a more generous option, as many of our neighbors’ household budgets strain under the weight of an affordability crisis.
How Much Would Each District Benefit from the House and Senate Child & Family Tax Credit Proposals?
The proposed Child and Family Tax Credit would help families by providing a refundable credit each year for each child under 13 and dependent adults over 65 years of age or with disabilities. This dashboard identifies – by legislative district – how many dependents would be eligible.
UPDATED: High-Income Households Are Not Fleeing Massachusetts
Massachusetts has a lower rate of outmigration among high-income households than among other households. This is true both in the most recent year for which IRS data are available (2020-2021) and over the preceding ten years (2011-2021).
Six Things at Stake for Racial Justice in the FY 2024 Budget Conference
After examining the House and Senate Fiscal Year 2024 budget proposals, our budget analysts highlighted six differences between the two that have implications for racial equity.
How Will We Spend Fair Share Dollars? Competing Proposals Highlight Needs and Opportunities
Fiscal Year 2024, which starts in July 2023, is the first state budget to include Fair Share dollars, and the Governor’s, House, and Senate budget proposals differ in how they would spend Fair Share funds. How do their priorities compare?
Statement on the Senate Ways and Means Budget Proposal
The state budget process continues on as the Senate Ways and Means Committee (SWM) released its proposal for the State budget today. With recent news that year-to-date tax revenue collections are lower than expected, the Senate grapples with hard choices about the Commonwealth’s priorities.
Comparing Tax Cut Proposals from 2022 to 2023
Massachusetts lawmakers have proposed tax policy changes in 2022 and 2023 that would reduce public revenue by large amounts—providing the most benefits to the most affluent households. This table compares the major, permanent tax cut packages proposed since last year.
Statement on the House Budget
The final House version of the budget, at $56.2 billion, is $154 million larger than the Governor’s proposal. It includes notable amendments to the House Ways and Means proposal, but remains similar at its core.
Statement on the House Ways and Means Budget Proposal
While this proposal includes some important investments and policies, both it and the Governor’s proposal are limited by a set of proposed regressive tax cuts.
High-Income Households Are Not Fleeing Massachusetts
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data show that Massachusetts has low rates of out-migration among high-income households compared to other states. As a consequence, delivering large tax cuts to these few households to stem a non-existent exodus is misguided.
Taking Measure of the Governor’s Tax Plan
The Governor’s proposal would provide benefits to households across the income spectrum, but by far the largest benefits would accrue to a small number of very wealthy families.
Governor’s Estate Tax Plan Is Costly and Gives Biggest Breaks to Largest Estates – Better Options Exist
During the current legislative session, lawmakers will consider a number of proposals for changing the Massachusetts estate tax. Two proposals are compared here – one put forward by Governor Healey (H.42), and another, S.1784/H.2960, offered in the Senate and House.
MassBudget’s Look at the Governor’s Budget Proposal
The governor’s budget proposal includes investments that will reduce some of the hardship faced by Bay Staters, but it also would deeply cut two major taxes for the wealthiest households, hurting our ability to fund those investments long-term.
Statement on Governor Healey’s Budget Proposal
Important investments and missed opportunities – MassBudget reacts to the Governor’s budget proposal.
