Voters' Guide to 2026 Massachusetts Ballot Questions
To help voters understand policy issues in Massachusetts, the Center for State Policy Analysis (cSPA) provides non-partisan research on all state ballot questions.
Technical briefs on four of the ballot questions are available. Full reports will be shared in September 2026.
Technical Briefs
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This November, Massachusetts voters could decide to cut the state income tax from 5 to 4 percent, as part of a proposed ballot question.
If this proposal passes, the effects will be substantial and enduring, straining the state budget by shifting billions of dollars out of public coffers and into people's pockets.
We at the Center for State Policy Analysis are committed to helping voters understand the likely impact of this and all state ballot questions.
Using the latest available data, and the same dynamic modeling techniques from our 2022 analysis of the millionaires tax, this report shows how an income tax cut would affect state spending, the state economy, and households at different rungs of the income ladder.
We find that:
- A tax cut would give households around the state more money to spend and save, with the average middle-class household's tax bill shrinking around $1,250 each year.
- Income tax collections would fall by nearly 20 percent and total state tax collections by roughly 10 percent, or $5.1 billion per year. A cut of this size would more than offset the revenue gains from the millionaires tax and imperil efforts to balance the state budget and sustain core government programs moving forward.
- Taxpayers across the income spectrum would see relatively similar benefits, with most households keeping an additional 1 percent of their income. This distribution looks quite different in dollar terms, with the highest-earning households receiving a tax cut roughly 30 times as large as a middle-class household.
- The tax cut would be phased in over three years, beginning January 1, 2027. This creates a serious planning problem for lawmakers, who are already building next year's budget and cannot know whether revenues will suddenly drop.
- Because the tax cut is relatively small compared to household incomes, it is unlikely to have a significant impact on private spending or the overall state economy.
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State tax revenues bounce around a lot. When the economy is strong, receipts can spike; in a downturn, they can collapse.
Massachusetts has a variety of strategies to deal with these fluctuations, including a provision that automatically sends money back to taxpayers when collections surge.
This automatic-refund rule, named Chapter 62F after its place in the state's legal code, was passed via a 1986 ballot initiative. But in its 40-year history, it has only been triggered twice, once at the outset and then again during the Covid-era bull market.
A proposed 2026 ballot question would adjust the rules for 62F, greatly increasing the regularity of automatic tax refunds but also adding a new source of instability to the state tax system.
We at the Center for State Policy Analysis are committed to helping voters understand the likely impact of this and all state ballot questions.
In this report, we show how the proposed adjustments to 62F would have worked in the past, how they're likely to operate in future, the risky staccato effect of the new rules, and their potential interaction with another ballot question that would cut the income tax.
We find that:
- This ballot question would dramatically increase the frequency and scale of 62F refunds, triggering 3–5 times as many refunds and returning 5–15 times as much money to taxpayers.
- One reason refunds have been rare under current law is because the state has cut its tax rates over time, effectively swapping policy-driven refunds for automatic ones.
- By increasing the size and frequency of 62F refunds, this ballot question reduces revenue as much as an income tax cut of roughly 0.4 percentage points. This downward pressure on revenues stems from the asymmetry of 62F, which provides refunds in good times but doesn't require additional payments in bad times.
- The ballot question has a timing problem that creates a risky feedback loop in the tax system, encouraging refunds every other year and triggering 62F in periods of weak revenue growth.
- Because the tax cut is relatively small compared to household incomes, it is unlikely to have a significant impact on private spending or the overall state economy.
- Under the ballot question, millionaires tax revenue would newly count towards 62F, but this would have a negligible effect on actual refunds.
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Among the ballot questions wending their way toward Massachusetts voters is a proposal to divert some sales tax revenue into a special account for nature conservation and outdoor recreation.
Rather than specify a fixed dollar amount, the ballot initiative would earmark existing sales tax dollars collected at recreation-focused outlets like sporting goods stores. And this makes it challenging for voters to understand the actual scale of the proposal.
As part of our commitment to analyzing all state ballot questions, we have produced an estimate of the likely size of this earmark, based on historical sales and budget data. We find that:
- The earmark is relatively small, roughly $65 million when fully phased in.
- Currently, the state spends upwards of $400 million each year on recreation and conservation efforts, counting both on-budget and bond-supported spending.
- Nothing in this ballot question compels the Legislature to increase spending on conservation and recreation efforts. They could use this earmarked money to support existing programs or potentially ignore the earmark altogether.
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Among this year's potential ballot questions is a proposal to override local restrictions on home construction. Colloquially called the "Starter Home" initiative, it would automatically allow single-family homes wherever there is adequate space, direct road access, and existing water and sewer service.
To make an informed decision on this ballot question, voters need to know the likely scale of change: would this ballot initiative create hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of new homes in the coming years?
As part of our commitment to analyzing all state ballot questions, we have developed an estimate of the likely impact using detailed information about municipal zoning codes along with contestable judgments about the likelihood that people will pursue construction opportunities. We find that:
- The starter home ballot question would generate roughly 750 new homes per year. That is our central estimate, but the analysis involves a lot of uncertainty, and our modeling suggests a plausible range from 350 to 1,200 per year.
- New construction at this scale would have a real but limited impact on overall production, increasing single-family home construction by roughly 15 percent and overall housing development by roughly 5 percent.
- Suburbs would see the biggest increase in home building, especially Boston-area suburbs that already have robust sewer infrastructure and lots that are large enough to split.
- While our estimate of likely home building is relatively restrained, the legal impact is quite large. Roughly 200,000 parcels statewide would have new construction options under this ballot initiative--including a small number of vacant lots and many large lots that could be readily subdivided.