This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sam Slater, a 41-year-old real estate developer based in Boston. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

I was born in South Florida, where my parents and uncle currently live, and I moved to Massachusetts when I was 10 years old.

I run our family office, which is based in both Boston and Palm Beach, Florida. We have business ventures across multiple industries, but my focus is on our real estate portfolio. From light industrial to agricultural to multifamily real estate, we’re well-diversified across many states in the US, as well as Canada.

It’s been interesting to see an increase in national interest in the Massachusetts millionaire’s tax as some initiatives in other states come up. I have friends in other markets who have been asking about it. Since its implementation in 2023, the obvious question to me is, why wouldn’t I move back to Florida?

The truth is, I often think about moving, but I feel strongly about why I’m staying. It’s all for my kids.

I’ve witnessed wealthy friends leave Massachusetts after the state tax

In addition to my focus on real estate, I also work in the sports and entertainment industry. I hold a minority ownership stake in the Seattle Kraken, an NHL team, and last year, I joined the ownership group of the Memphis Grizzlies. I’m very active in the world of sport, and it’s been a really enjoyable and successful venture. Over the past 15 years, I’ve also produced over 40 feature films.

With the progression of state taxes in the last few years, particularly the millionaire tax, I’ve seen many people, including friends in the hedge fund, private equity, and finance spaces, move or confirm their plans to do so. However, I’m in a slightly different situation.

I want my kids to grow up in Massachusetts

I have two younger children, a 7 and 10-year-old, and I would prefer them to grow up here with all that Massachusetts has to offer.

We live in a town with a wonderful public school system, and I don’t want to take that away from them. More broadly, eastern Massachusetts and Boston, in particular, are highly accessible areas and offer a lot. We’ve got everything from sports to culture, and all four seasons. I don’t want to pull my kids from that for my desire to pay less in taxes.

If my children weren’t young, maybe my answer would be different.

I’d consider moving if things keep trending in this direction

It’s difficult to say if any changes I’ve seen in Massachusetts are a direct result of this particular tax. The broader market conditions in the economy are, in certain areas, quite strong, while in other areas, they are not.

If you take condominium sales in downtown Boston, we’re at extraordinarily low points both for pricing and velocity, especially if we’re looking back on a 10 or 15-year horizon. I think it would probably be a stretch to say it’s solely because of this tax, but high earners leaving Massachusetts removes potential high-end condominium buyers from the market.

The wealth tax in Massachusetts hasn’t affected my lifestyle

Fortunately, I haven’t had to make any lifestyle changes because of the wealth tax, but I’m certainly aware of the taxes I pay in general, specifically as a result of this tax. My question is, what will come next after this?

What remains to be seen is how the additional revenue brought in to Massachusetts from this tax will trickle back to everyone in the Commonwealth.

If taxes continue to increase and no one can point to any substantial changes being made in the state, I think that’s when we’ll see a more meaningful exodus of people, even potentially myself, from Massachusetts.

My hope is that the government will make smart choices as to where the additional revenue goes

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, our public transit system, has struggled for a long time, and it needs huge investments in its infrastructure and operations. Will we see a boost there? I don’t know.

There are two bridges that connect mainland Massachusetts to Cape Cod, and they’re nearly 100 years old. They were going to be replaced at a multi-billion-dollar cost, but some of the funding was cut due to the Trump Administration. Will we see some help for those projects?

I’m wondering if there’s anything that will be done to truly help move us forward, rather than just keep us afloat with the existing programs we have at the state budget level. I think more people who are paying the millionaire’s tax would be on board if there were a more complete message about how the tax dollars would be used.

It’s certainly something that people are watching and aware of, with good reason.

Do you have a story to share about paying a wealth tax? If so, please reach out to the reporter at tmartinelli@businessinsider.com.

Can Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Jimmy Fallon pronounce every city and town in Massachusetts correctly, including those on Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard?

In a promotion for Damon and Affleck’s upcoming thriller film, “The Rip,” the trio hammered through every single one of the state’s 351 municipalities on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” on Tuesday, Jan. 13 – in thick Boston accents.

Having grown up in Massachusetts, the two actors are no strangers to Boston accents – famously putting them to use in “Good Will Hunting.” And while their newest movie is set in Miami, not Boston, the actors jumped at the chance to slip into their New England personas on “The Tonight Show.”

Wearing their most “Boston” outfits – Red Sox merch and cold-weather gear – Damon, Affleck, and Fallon took turns reciting the names of each Massachusetts town in alphabetical order as soft music played in the background.

“Abington, Acton, Acushnet, Adams, Agawam,” Damon started, with a deadpan expression on his face.

“Alford, Amesbury, Amherst, Andover, Aquinnah,” Affleck continued, with a gruff Boston accent.

“Arlington, Ashburnham, Ashby, Ashfield, Ashland,” Fallon went on, trying his hand at an accent as well.

And yes, the segment continued like this for about five minutes.

Were there any slip-ups on the Massachusetts town names?

For the most part, the three flew through the Massachusetts town names, even though it’s easy for tongues to get twisted when reciting them all at top speed.

Fallon stumbled briefly over Winchendon, repeating it a few times before he sounded confident. Damon pronounced “Uxbridge” as “Oxbridge.”

Cape and Islands towns seemed to get a fair shake. Fallon made a point to enunciate each “r” in the town of Truro. Chatham and Eastham, spelled similarly, but pronounced differently, were each said correctly. Yarmouth got a little more airtime as the final town on the list, when Affleck threw up his hands in celebration while drawing out his Boston-accented “Yaaaah,” then bowed.

Affleck, a Massachusetts town-name natural, couldn’t resist a cheeky comment when he reached the home of the New England Patriots.

“Foxboro for your mother,” he quipped.

Another notable moment was when Affleck seemed to learn mid-recitation that Peru is, in fact, the name of a town in Massachusetts.

With little government guidance on how to lawfully undertake the transition, and loath to give up even a few cents by rounding transactions down to the nearest nickel, Maloney is instead trying to kick the coin jar down the road.

“We’re sort of hoarding,” said Maloney, who has run Julio’s since 2000, “so that we don’t have to deal with this problem.”

It’s a problem playing out in cash registers across Massachusetts and the country as the realities of a penniless future begin to present themselves.

When Canada phased out its one-cent coin a little more than a decade ago, it offered retailers and consumers a clear path forward, suggesting that cash transactions be rounded up or down to the nearest nickel — $1.61 and $1.62 become $1.60, while $1.63 and $1.64 become $1.65 — with sales tax applied before rounding. In Massachusetts, retailers say they have been given little such direction from the federal or state government, bringing about a patchwork of solutions as stores try to navigate the changing tides of change on their own.

“I didn’t really think it was going to cause much of an issue, but then it started causing an issue,” said Sara-Ann Turner, a cashier at Warren Hardware in the South End. The shop has begun rounding transactions to the nearest five-cent increment when customers don’t have exact change, which has left some shoppers feeling nickel-and-dimed when the sum comes down in the store’s favor.

The penny remains legal tender, with billions of the coin still in circulation — many likely sitting in jacket pockets, under couch cushions, and between sidewalk cracks. But the lack of fresh ones shipping out of the US Mint means that cash transactions will soon have to sidestep the one-cent coin. And even in an increasingly cashless economy, that’s no simple endeavor.

In a recent survey conducted by the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, 65 percent of members said they planned to take Canada’s recommended approach and round cash transactions up or down to the nearest nickel. The other 35 percent said they would always round down in the customer’s favor, a policy Dunkin’ has recommended for its franchisees. (The survey did not give respondents the option to say they would always round up.)

But any rounding policy stores choose risks running afoul of a tangle of bureaucratic regulations, said Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts. Consider, for instance, a Massachusetts law that prohibits surcharges on customers who use credit cards over cash, or the federal statute that mandates food stamp customers be charged the same as those using cash.

“The sellers just need some guidance, number one, and number two, some protection,” Hurst said.

In a letter in early December, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and California Representative Maxine Waters sought answers from the heads of the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the US Mint, writing that the absence of guidance could “risk worsening inconsistencies in customer transactions, uncertainty in pricing approaches, legal compliance, tax calculations, and more.”

Late last month, the Treasury Department published a frequently-asked-questions webpage that pointed to the technique of rounding to the nearest nickel but ultimately passed the buck to states, which it said “will approach this issue differently based on unique considerations.”

Both chambers of Congress have introduced bipartisan federal legislation, called the Common Cents Act, that would codify for US businesses the same rounding practices as Canada recommended, but progress for the bills appears to have stalled.

And while states including Georgia and Utah have come out with basic guidelines for retailers — leaving rounding decisions up to individual merchants but clarifying that sales tax should be applied before rounding — Massachusetts has yet to do the same.

In a statement, a Massachusetts Department of Revenue spokesperson said the office is “considering what if any guidance is needed.”

The Massachusetts attorney general’s office said any legal changes to retailers’ practices would have to come from lawmakers.

“It’s more involved than any of us thought it would be on the first glance,” said state Representative Tackey Chan, who is looking into the penny issue.

Merchants may soon get some temporary relief, thanks to the Federal Reserve, which distributes coins to banks. This week, all seven of the Federal Reserve bank distribution sites in the Boston district will once again accept deposits of pennies from banks, a move the Fed said it made “to better support the circulation of pennies for commercial activity.” This may eventually allow banks to order the coins again, which could then allow supply to trickle down to retailers.

Amid all the unknowns, Julio’s isn’t the only one trying to put off the inevitable. In November, the supermarkets Price Chopper and Market 32 held a promotion in which customers could bring in pennies and receive double their value in a gift card to the grocers. The event amassed roughly 20 million pennies, or $200,000, according to director of customer service Michele McKeever — about $11,900 of which came from the chains’ 14 Massachusetts stores.

“We were hoping that we could buy some time and get legislation passed to give us clear direction,” McKeever said.

For stores that have already begun their own rounding policies, there can be growing pains as they explain the new system to clientele. Turner, the Warren Hardware cashier, said she dealt with one customer who grew particularly upset at being shortchanged.

“‘I work hard for these two pennies,’” Turner recalled the customer saying.

Andrea Pendergast, co-owner of the Cape Cod Package Store Fine Wine & Spirits in Centerville, is also worried about inadvertently driving away business.

“We end all of our pricing with nine,” she said, a common consumer psychology trick known as charm pricing. Rounding up to the next dollar, she knows, would “look, psychologically, from a customer standpoint, like maybe the prices are going up.”

While some retailers are concerned about the effects of rounding policies on their profits, research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond last year estimated that rounding to the nearest nickel would end up costing shoppers, not retailers, about $6 million annually. This was because, the researchers found, prices tended to end on digits that would round up.

Nevertheless, Maloney, the Julio’s Liquors owner, worries about the potential hit to his bottom line once his penny-pinching days run out. Choosing to always round down could cost him the equivalent of a part-time employee’s pay.

“I know everybody’s going to say, ‘It’s just pennies,’” he said. “I go, ‘Yes, but pennies add up.’”

Dana Gerber can be reached at dana.gerber@globe.com. Follow her @danagerber6.