Massachusetts
‘Everyone’s leaving’: Why more of the wealthy are moving from Massachusetts to other states – The Boston Globe
“Half of my Massachusetts clients over the last five years have either left or are planning to leave,” Karger says. That represents “billions of dollars in net worth and hundreds of millions of dollars in annual income.”
He — and other experts I’ve talked with — note that Massachusetts faces stiff competition from other states for tax dollars. Such moves could profoundly impact funding for schools, infrastructure, social services, and charities. And it’s part of a growing discussion about the state’s competitiveness as a place to do business, build companies, and raise a family.
Karger lives in Boston, and he’s an unabashed booster of the state: “We’ve got the best private schools. We’ve got the best public schools. We’ve got hospitals. The city of Boston is the most beautiful city in America. It’s the safest big city in America.”
But he notes that wealthy people tend to be particularly mobile. And many of his clients are “straddling,” he says. “They bought nice homes in the Bocas or the Palm Beaches or the Miamis and are starting to plan.”
Much of this planning began in late 2022, when the “millionaires tax” was approved in Massachusetts. The new law imposed an additional 4 percent tax on income over a million dollars. Since the state tax rate is 5 percent, that means that income over a million dollars would be taxed at 9 percent.
This applies not only to people who make more than a million dollars a year (the threshold for 2025 is $1,083,150), but also to someone who, in a given year, sells a $1.5 million house, even though they might only make $100,000 in salary.
And the tax comes on top of already-strict rules around wealth in Massachusetts: The estate tax is one of the heftiest in the country, kicking in for any estate worth more than $2 million. Only Oregon and Rhode Island have lower thresholds. In New York — another Democratic stronghold — the estate tax kicks in at $7.35 million. In California, there is no estate tax (though California is starting to face its own exodus of wealthy residents as it considers a wealth tax for billionaires).
New Hampshire, Karger says, has seen a large influx of wealthy folks from Massachusetts. “We have clients [who] have had homes up there and are moving up there.” And the shift to New Hampshire is part of a broader trend among Massachusetts residents: In 2024, more than 20,000 relocated up north. Meanwhile, Florida absorbed nearly 22,000 Massachusetts residents.
And that has ripple effects, Karger says. “Charity is a big, big problem. All of these nonprofits here, I see it firsthand. My clients, all of a sudden, they leave and they wind down their commitments to Children’s [Hospital] and to MGH and to the smaller local nonprofits.” Karger says he’s “very scared of this continued wallet drain.”
He understands why it might make sense to “tax the rich. They’ve made so much money.” But he notes that the rich can easily say: “Tax me all you want. I’m out.” He says he hopes “we don’t destroy the best city and best state in America. … I really hope we can figure this out.”
Florida-based entrepreneur Craig Welch, who founded a series of financial tech companies and used to live in Massachusetts, argues that “when the entrepreneurs leave, lots of other jobs leave too … I’ve started my third company in Florida, and there are right now 25, 30 employees that would’ve been in Massachusetts, and they are not going to be.”
Welch says the business landscape — including the approach to taxes — was better under Bill Weld, who was governor for much of the 1990s. But since the millionaires tax went into effect, he says, “I know four people who have left the state… And what all of them have said to me is: It’s not the tax. It’s the fact that Massachusetts is making it clear that they don’t want VCs and entrepreneurs in the state.”
Like Welch, Boston-based venture capitalist Antonio Rodriguez has witnessed an exodus of wealthy people, particularly amongst those who fund companies. Much of the exodus started during the pandemic, he argues: “When we all had our heads in the sand, government did a bunch of dumb things.”
Rodriguez, a managing partner at Matrix, believes that the millionaires tax was passed without “a really organized debate about whether it made sense in terms of innovation in Massachusetts.” People assumed that the “golden goose” — the dynamic Massachusetts ecosystem — would continue to offer up “golden eggs,” he says. “ As opposed to taking care of the goose before it dies from malnutrition.”
At the same time, companies allowed more employees to work remotely, and many workers scattered. Last year, a Massachusetts Business Roundtable report showed that more than 85 percent of midsize-to-large employers surveyed had staff affiliated with Massachusetts operations who worked remotely. And that number has only risen since 2023, despite a raft of back-to-office headlines.
Rodriguez says many of his fellow investors left, too. Younger venture capitalists “moved away because of [a] lack of deal volume,” he said. Some in the prime of their career also left, despite Rodriguez’s belief that Massachusetts is a great place to raise kids. (He cites New York City and San Francisco as places where VCs have moved.)
“The thing that scares me now,” Rodriguez says, “is that we’re in this natural period where the Silicon Valley machine is spinning really quickly with Anthropic and OpenAI and Cursor and all of these AI companies that are there. And instead of seeing some of that diffusion come back here, which would’ve been typical of prior waves, there’s no one back here to pick it up because everyone’s leaving or has left.”
In 2025, Welch, the entrepreneur, lost a high-profile court case after Massachusetts claimed he had undeclared income from the state. Welch — who lived in New Hampshire at the time — sold his $4.7 million share in a Massachusetts company he had founded about 20 years earlier. Welch argued that the shares were not awarded as income; at the time he received them, they had essentially no value. The Department of Revenue prevailed.
An investor who relocated to Florida told Rodriguez that “Massachusetts just feels ‘grabby’ for the first time.”
When it comes to tech and innovation, he says, “these geographic questions are about flywheels that start spinning. And you get enough people of a certain type, and the flywheel spins. And it’s easier for that next person to come and stay here. I think that the best thing you can have as a city or a state is a flywheel that’s unique to some source of intellectual capital or talent that is spinning really quickly.” (See the rise of biotech locally.)
He says when those flywheels “slow down — or God forbid, stop spinning altogether — then the difference between here and Milwaukee — not to pick on Milwaukee — is much less than people think.”
The question of whether the millionaires tax has been successful is controversial. The Institute for Policy Studies points to the fact that between 2022 and 2024, Massachusetts households with at least $50 million increased by more than 25 percent (from about 2,000 to about 2,600).
But during those years, the stock market also skyrocketed. It’s possible that lots of wealthy people took their tax dollars to other states, but a batch of new residents joined the $50-million-plus club. Now, the question is: What will happen to those people, their tax dollars, and the jobs they create?
Massachusetts faces a harsh reality: It isn’t about what’s fair. Without any national push to raise taxes on the wealthy, it’s a race to the bottom among states. And in order to impose its vision of fairness, our state may ultimately pay a very high price.
“Massachusetts thinks [the new tax has] been a big tailwind, and it’s got a couple billion dollars of collected revenue,” says Karger. “That’s shortsighted. They’re going to need that, because people are leaving.”
Kara Miller is the host of the podcast It Turns Out. Send comments to kara.miller@globe.com.
Massachusetts
Meteor Lands In Cape Cod + Bus Crash Kills 5 From MA + Wind Storm Knocks Out Power To Thousands: MA Weekend
MASSACHUSETTS — Residents throughout New England were simultaneously startled as a meteor that landed in Cape Cod caused a sonic boom this past weekend.
Meanwhile, a bus driver is facing charges after five Massachusetts residents died in a crash on a highway in Virginia.
Plus, another State Trooper was caught handling a wrong-way driver situation on Route 1.
Mysterious Boom Heard Across MA Was An Exploding Meteor, Experts Say
The noises were heard around 2:11 p.m. Saturday, with people describing a sudden bang that rattled windows and even shook some homes. The American Meteor Society said that the booms heard were actually caused by a meteor about three feet wide entering the atmosphere near the border of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Residents as far as Ipswich and Johnston, Rhode Island, reported hearing and feeling the sensations. Meteorologist Nick Stewart shared satellite images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, showing where the meteor entered the atmosphere and combusted while traveling at 75,000 miles per hour above the ocean.
Bus Driver Charged After MA Family Of 4, Worcester Woman Killed In VA Crash
Jing S. Dong, of Staten Island, New York, now faces two counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the collision, which occurred around 2:35 a.m. Friday on southbound I-95 near Quantico. Among those killed were a 45-year-old man, a 44-year-old woman, a 13-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy, all from Greenfield, Massachusetts. All were in the Acura, which police said caught fire after the collisions. Police on Saturday evening identified the fifth person killed as Priscilla R. Mafalda, 25, of Worcester, Massachusetts, who was riding in the Suburban struck by the bus.
In total, about 44 people were transported to area hospitals, including three with critical injuries.
State Trooper Hospitalized After Route 1 Wrong-Way Crash In Peabody
State Police said the trooper was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries after police acted in coordination to protect traffic and stop the driver, who was traveling southbound on Route 1 North in Peabody. The incident occurred not far from the location on Route 1 where State Trooper Kevin Trainor was killed when his cruiser was hit head-on in a wrong-way crash in Lynnfield last month. The driver in Sunday’s crash was also hospitalized and charged with operating under the influence of liquor, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, and driving the wrong way on a state highway.
Rapidly Expanding Grocery Chain Has Big Plans For MA
Sprouts Farmers Market is slated to launch up to 40 locations throughout the region in the coming years. Construction has begun for the first Massachusetts spot in Weymouth, which has an opening date of 2028. The Phoenix-based organic grocery chain has more than 480 stores in 25 states.
Saturday’s Meteorite Was ‘Fishy Squisher’ And NASA Knows Where To Find It In Cape Cod Bay
Data from NASA suggest fragments of the meteorite lie in waters from the middle of the bay to about 10 miles northeast of the town of Sandwich. The agency said late Saturday it picked up radar signatures of the fragments from four radar sites, and termed the strike a “fishy squisher.” The meteorite entered Earth’s atmosphere about 40 miles above the Bay State and southern New Hampshire, creating the sonic boom. Water in the bombarded portion of Cape Cod Bay is about 100 feet deep.
35K Without Power As Winter-Like Storm Pummels MA With 55+ MPH Winds
Massachusetts residents throughout the North Shore were without power on Saturday morning as a winter-like storm tore a path of tree damage, downpours, and fierce winds throughout New England. Widespread tree damage was reported across the state, with the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency reporting 34,228 customers without power as of 11:20 a.m. Wind speeds reached a high of 55 miles per hour. Temperatures dropped into the 40s with wind chills in the 30s as the storm arrived across the Bay State. The unsettled weather will continue through Monday and Tuesday before a warming trend takes hold later in the week.
See Also:
Cape Shoreline Named Among The Nation’s 10 Best, According To ‘Dr. Beach’
U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, a moderate Massachusetts Democrat, secured enough delegate support Saturday to appear on the state’s primary ballot as he challenges incumbent U.S. Sen. Ed Markey in this year’s Senate race.
Yet even though Moulton cleared a key hurdle to continue his Senate bid, it was Markey who won the party’s endorsement after winning more than 50% of the delegation’s support.
“You have a choice, you have to decide what the future looks like and what you’re going to demand,” Markey said Saturday in front of more than 4,000 delegates.
Markey won nearly 73% of the delegates’ support, while Moulton won nearly 27% of the vote. Massachusetts Democratic Party rules require statewide candidates to get at least 15% of delegate support to appear on primary ballots.
In heavily Democratic Massachusetts, the Senate primary contest is one of the most closely watched in the country as Moulton, 47, has centered his campaign on changing the status quo and demanding a generational shift in leadership.
If reelected, Markey would be 80 before his third six-year term would begin. While Markey has touted his stamina and embrace of progressive policies, questions about age have continued to swirl around Democratic candidates as they fight to take back control of Congress.
Incumbent Sen. Ed Markey is leading Rep. Seth Moulton, but if Rep. Ayanna Pressley were to enter the Democratic primary, it would change the picture, according to a new poll from Suffolk University and The Boston Globe.
In his nomination speech, Moulton argued that the Democratic Party needed more than “incremental change” and needed to start anew.
“It’s time for the generation that grew up with the internet, and will have to live for decades with AI, to lead our way through it,” Moulton said.
Moulton only addressed his opponent briefly during his nomination speech, giving a passing nod on not waiting another six years for generational change and later calling on Markey to participate in multiple debates before the September primary. Currently, the two candidates have agreed to participate in one debate later this summer.
Markey, instead, took a more critical approach by attacking Moulton’s previous comments about transgender kids and accepting corporate PAC money.
“Massachusetts deserves better than a senator who scapegoats trans kids,” Markey said to loud cheers.
In 2024, Moulton caught flak from some members of his party for saying he didn’t want his daughters playing in sports against transgender girls. Critics said Moulton echoed Trump’s talking points against allowing transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports.
Moulton has since said his intent with that statement “was to point out that, as a party, we need to be willing to have difficult conversations.”
Moulton, who enlisted in the Marines after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and served four tours of duty in Iraq, was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014. He briefly launched a 2020 presidential campaign, but he dropped that bid after a few months.
Markey served as a Massachusetts congressman for nearly 40 years before winning the Senate seat in 2013. He fended off a challenge in 2020 from Rep. Joe Kennedy III in the Senate primary by turning to his progressive allies to overcome a challenge from a younger rival from America’s most famous political family.
The Massachusetts primary is Sept. 1.
RANDOLPH, Mass. (WWLP) – A Randolph resident has won a $1 million prize through the final drawing of the Massachusetts State Lottery “$4,000,000 Monopoly Doubler” instant ticket game.
Brenda Mellor of Randolph claimed the game’s tenth and final $1 million prize.
She selected the cash option and received a one-time payment of $650,000 before taxes. Mellor said she plans to use the winnings to pay for home improvements, including renovations to her roof and pool.
The winning ticket was purchased at The Variety Store at 2 Mazzeo Drive in Randolph. The retailer will receive a $10,000 bonus for selling the ticket.
Local News Headlines
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