State's Millionaire Tax to Pay for Free School Lunches

Every public school student in Massachusetts will enjoy free school lunches owing to a new millionaire tax. Passed by voters in November and instituted at the start of this year, the 4% tax on earnings above $1 million will account for $1 billion of the state's $56 billion 2024 fiscal budget, which Gov. Maura Healey signed last week, CBS News reports. About $524 million in revenue from the tax will go toward education, with $172 million set aside to provide free school lunches to all public students from kindergarten to 12th grade, per WXMI and CBS. Massachusetts is the seventh state to offer universal school lunches since COVID-19 funding for the program expired, after California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, and New Mexico.

"Free universal school meals will literally change lives, full stop," Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, a Democrat, said in a statement earlier this month, per CBS. "No child in Massachusetts will ever have to wonder how to get though the school day on an empty stomach." The wealth tax will also pay for more childcare slots for income-eligible families and for expanded financial aid for college students. (The budget includes free community college for students aged 25 and older, per WXMI.) Another $477 million in revenue from the wealth tax is allocated for transportation initiatives, with $100 million to be used to fix and maintain roads, per Insider, which has more on the breakdown.

Massachusetts voters passed the tax increase by a slim margin of 52-48. Critics say it will end up hurting in the long run by chasing away business owners—and their businesses—from the state that already had the nickname of "Taxachusetts," as a piece in the Boston Magazine laid out earlier this year. "Put yourself in the shoes of an entrepreneur," says an unnamed businessman who changed his primary residence to Florida because of the new law. "Would I incorporate in Massachusetts? No." (More Massachusetts stories.)