Massachusetts Budgeted $2.4 Billion From Its Millionaire Surtax. Ten Months In, It Had $3.1 Billion.

In November 2022, Massachusetts voters added a 4% surtax on the portion of anyone's annual income above roughly $1 million — a threshold that rises with inflation each year, $1.053 million for 2024 and $1.083 million for 2025.▸ Collections started in January 2023. The "Fair Share Amendment" doesn't let the Legislature spend the money however it likes: it is constitutionally dedicated to "quality public education and affordable public colleges and universities, and for the repair and maintenance of roads, bridges, and public transportation." Four fiscal years in, the tax has a track record — and it keeps beating the number the state itself expected it to hit.

Every year, Massachusetts budget writers set a "consensus revenue estimate" for the surtax before the fiscal year starts, then cap Fair Share spending at that number — a deliberately conservative move, since the tax was brand new and volatile income from capital gains and bonuses is hard to project.▸ Every year so far, actual collections have blown past it.

In fiscal 2024, the state estimated $1.0 billion and the Department of Revenue ultimately certified $2.46 billion — more than double.▸ In fiscal 2025, the estimate was $1.3 billion; the final tally, according to Executive Office for Administration and Finance officials, came in around $3.0 billion. For fiscal 2026, the state finally raised its estimate to $2.4 billion — and by April 2026, ten months into the year, CommonWealth Beacon reported collections had already topped $3.1 billion, 20% ahead of the same ten-month stretch of fiscal 2025, a pace Raise Up Massachusetts attributed to the Department of Revenue's own certification. The full fiscal year closed June 30, 2026; DOR won't certify the final number until October.

The surtax can only fund education and transportation, so every budget year forces a split between the two.▸ In the enacted fiscal 2026 budget, Massachusetts appropriated $2.4 billion in Fair Share revenue — matching that year's consensus estimate almost exactly — with roughly seventy cents of every dollar going to education and the rest to transportation, per the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center's analysis of the enacted General Appropriations Act.

The education side, $1.7 billion, funds the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) early-education grant program at $475 million, universal free school meals, Chapter 70 aid to local school districts, and tuition- free community college through MassEducate and MassReconnect.▸ The transportation side, $712 million, funds the MBTA, the state's 15 regional transit authorities, and MassDOT road and bridge work — on top of a separate $250 million Fair Share pledge that unlocked $1.1 billion in additional MBTA and MassDOT borrowing capacity between fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2029, per the state's own budget office.

Follow the $475 million C3 line to where it actually lands, and it lands on payroll.▸ As of the most recent breakdown the state has published, C3 grants — combining Fair Share revenue with General Fund dollars — support 7,900 child care programs statewide, sustain more than 25,000 licensed seats, and employ more than 41,000 educators. A related, larger pool of state child care financial assistance — also funded partly by the surtax — now reaches more than 65,000 low-income children and their families.

The transportation side has its own people-facing numbers: fare-free service now runs on 13 of Massachusetts's 15 regional transit authorities, and statewide RTA ridership rose from 13.7 million rides in fiscal 2021 to 22.5 million in fiscal 2023.▸ On the education side, the MassReconnect program for adults 25 and older grew enrollment 45% in its first year, and combined with MassEducate's free community college, drove a 14% overall enrollment increase by fall 2024 — figures the state's budget office reports directly in the same document that supplies the C3 numbers above.

Fiscal 2026 revenue and spending figures cover a year that closed June 30, 2026, but has not yet been finally certified by the Department of Revenue (certification is due in October); the 10-month figure cited here is a floor on the full-year total, not the final number. C3 workforce and program-reach figures are the most recent detailed breakdown Massachusetts has published, dated to the FY2026 H.1 budget cycle (early 2025) — later than the FY2026 GAA dollar figures cited elsewhere in this piece, but the program was made permanent in that same budget and funded at a comparable $475 million in the FY2026 GAA that followed.