Touts investments but says she wants to track impacts on outmigration
JUNE 11, 2025…..Debate over the surtax on income above about $1 million was stirred Wednesday as Gov. Maura Healey pushed back on a report that she would not oppose attempts to reverse the voter-approved levy.
The Boston Globe reported Tuesday evening that Healey indicated an openness to undoing the 4% income surtax Massachusetts levies on wealthier households. The Globe reported that Healey, during her appearance at the newspaper’s Tech Innovation Summit that afternoon, said the state should reexamine “what we need to do within our existing tax regime” to attract people to Massachusetts.
The Globe said Healey was asked whether she would oppose efforts to overturn the surtax that voters passed in 2022 and responded, “No, I think we need to evaluate what’s going on, and I want to see the numbers. I just want to see what’s happening in terms of any potential outmigration.”
A Healey spokesperson said she did not have audio of the governor’s remarks at the Globe event to provide to the News Service. Event organizers told virtual attendees that all sessions were recorded and will be made available on a Globe YouTube channel. No recordings had been posted by midday Wednesday.
The governor’s comments in the Globe seemed to take some advocates by surprise. T4MA Executive Director Reggie Ramos pointed out that Healey had previously touted the benefits of the surtax and relied entirely on its revenue to fund her long-term transportation investment proposal.
“[S]o it’s disappointing that Governor Healey would be willing to reverse the progress the Commonwealth has made as a result of the revenue from the Fair Share Amendment that was overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2022,” Ramos said. “When it comes to income inequality, which is a serious issue in our state, it is hard to comprehend why Governor Healey would like to align the Commonwealth’s tax policy with the Trump Administration’s support for more tax breaks for the wealthy.”
Raise Up Massachusetts, the influential coalition that shepherded passage of the income surtax, declined to comment Wednesday morning.
Others didn’t buy that the governor was serious about reconsidering the surtax.
“If Healey was interested in undoing the economic damage from the income surtax she endorsed in 2022, she would have already done something about it,” Paul Craney, spokesman for the Mass. Fiscal Alliance and a regular critic of both Healey and the surtax, said on X. “Instead, she gaslights the public with more meaningless words.”
Asked Wednesday morning about the Globe report that said the governor “indicated she could be open to undoing” the surtax, Healey said, “No, I don’t support repealing the surtax.”
“I think I was asked a qu- — I don’t remember exactly how that was phrased. But what I said and what I meant by all of that is — first of all, nobody’s made more effective use of the revenues from the surtax than our administration; investments in transportation and education that are transformational, that are really important for our economy, that are supported by business, and that make us a stronger, more affordable, more competitive state,” she said. Hers is the first administration that has had the chance to deploy surtax revenues.
The governor added, “In terms of the surtax and tax revenue generally, what I said is that I am always evaluating and looking at those revenues, looking at the data, looking at impact, and that’s what I’m committed to continuing to do, working with my A&F secretary.”
The governor’s comments at the Globe event came hours after Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz told municipal officials that the surtax could generate nearly $3 billion in revenue this year, more than double the $1.3 billion of surtax money spent in the current year’s budget.
He talked about the state getting “the benefit of being able to spend those dollars on education and transportation” as he forecast another surplus surtax spending bill in the future.
In May, when an April revenue surge was attributed largely to surtax collections, Gorzkowicz said the month’s solid result supported “Governor Healey’s vision for utilizing Fair Share revenue to make transformative investments in Massachusetts, from the Governor’s $8 billion transportation financing plan to her investments in our #1 schools, cost-free community college, and expanded access to child care.” He said the surtax “continues to perform strongly as a revenue source.”
At the same time, Raise Up pointed to the revenue results and said that the full effect of the surtax “is only getting started.”
“Before the Fair Share Amendment passed, lobbyists for the ultra-wealthy claimed it would fail to generate meaningful revenue and hurt our economy along the way. They’ve been proven totally wrong. The Fair Share Amendment is exceeding expectations every month, and by supporting investments that maintain our well-educated workforce and help people get to and from their jobs, it’s helping build the 21st century economy we need to help every family thrive,” the group said in a statement.
[Sam Drysdale contributed to this report.]
