Massachusetts passed a 4% millionaire's tax last year. Now every public-school student will have acc

Publish date: 2024-07-20
2023-08-13T17:24:47Z

Public-school students in Massachusetts are set to get free lunch and breakfast thanks to a new 4% tax on people's earnings above $1 million.

Massachusetts in 2022 voted for a constitutional amendment to tax high earners. It went into effect at the beginning of 2023.

State House News Service, an independent news wire, reported that $1 billion of the state's record $56.2 billion fiscal budget for 2024 will be funded by its new 4% tax.

Gov. Maura Healey signed the budget on Wednesday, making Massachusetts the eighth state to adopt a plan for free school lunch since the expiration of federal free school lunches that had emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The outlet reported that a portion of the $1 billion expected to be gathered from the new income tax would be used to provide all public-school students in Massachusetts with free breakfast and lunch, if they want it.

WCVB reported that state lawmakers agreed to allocate $523 million of anticipated revenue from the new tax on education and set aside $477 million for transportation.

In February, President Joe Biden urged lawmakers to pass his billionaires' tax proposal, which would impose a minimum 20% tax on households with a net worth of more than $100 million.

Unlike Massachusetts' new tax, which is on income, the proposed billionaire's tax is aimed at wealth.

Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told CNBC the proposal would target "big corporations and the wealthiest Americans," while protecting people who made less than $400,000 a year from tax increases.

Biden also signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in February, which included a 15% minimum tax on corporations earning more than $1 billion.

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