Of the $1.7 million raised to pass Question 5, roughly $1.6 million came from a single entity that files nothing with the state and whose own funders are not disclosed anywhere.
That is legal, and it is the most interesting thing about this question. But start with what the measure actually does, because it is easy to get wrong.
The Attorney General’s summary, verbatim
“This proposed law would change the limit on how much revenue the state can collect in a given year. The proposal would limit state revenue in a given year to the net amount of state revenue from the year before, increased by a rate equal to the average growth of wages and salaries in Massachusetts over the most recent three years. If revenue collected by the state in a given year exceeds the limit, the excess amount would be refunded to taxpayers the following year. The proposed law would include all revenue from the surtax on incomes over $1 million when calculating the revenue limit and when determining whether state revenue exceeds the limit.
The provisions of the proposed law would all be effective as of July 1, 2027.
The proposed law states that, if any of its parts were declared invalid, the other parts would stay in effect.”
What your vote does
A YES vote re-anchors the state revenue cap to what the state actually collected the previous year, rather than to the previous year’s cap, and brings the millionaires surtax inside the cap.
A NO vote leaves the current law alone: the cap compounds off itself from a 1986 base, and surtax revenue stays outside it.
It takes effect for fiscal years beginning after June 30, 2027, which means the first determination under it would come around September 2028.
The background you need first
Chapter 62F is a law voters passed in 1986 that caps how much tax revenue the state may keep. Exceed the cap and the excess goes back to taxpayers.
It has triggered exactly twice in forty years: 1987, and 2022, when it returned roughly $3 billion. The State Auditor makes the determination each September, and the statute says it is conclusive.
After the 2022 rebate, the Legislature changed how the money is divided. Under Chapter 50 of the Acts of 2023, the credit is now calculated by dividing the excess by the number of taxpayers, producing an equal dollar amount per person, with a married couple counted as two. The old formula was proportional to what you paid, which is why the 2022 rebate sent tens of thousands of dollars to the wealthiest filers and single-digit checks to the poorest.
The two changes, precisely
The petition is only three sections long, and the second one is the consequential half.
1. The cap stops compounding off itself
Today the cap is calculated by taking last year’s cap and multiplying it by a growth factor based on wage growth. That figure has compounded on itself annually since 1986, whether or not the state ever collected that much.
Question 5 changes the multiplicand to last year’s actual collections. The growth factor itself is untouched.
2. The millionaires surtax comes inside the cap
Section 2 strikes a single subsection of G.L. c. 29 § 2BBBBBB, which currently reads: “Income surtax revenues shall not be subject to the allowable state tax revenue limitations established by chapter 62F.”
That sentence is the wall the Legislature built around the Fair Share money when it passed. Question 5 removes it.
Roughly two to three billion dollars a year in surtax revenue would start counting toward the total measured against a cap whose historical base never included a dollar of it. This is the mechanism that makes the limit far easier to breach, and it is why opponents describe the measure as repealing the millionaires tax by other means. Both sides are describing the same provision accurately.
One drafting point nobody is making
The petition does not touch the definition of “Allowable State Tax Revenues,” which contains a ratchet: if the computed maximum for a year falls below the previous year’s allowable figure, the allowable figure simply stays where it was.
So the operative cap can never fall. In a year when collections come in below the standing cap, re-basing downward does nothing, because the ratchet holds. The re-basing bites only in the year after the cap is exceeded, where it raises the cap.
Which means the re-basing change alone is genuinely ambiguous in direction. Whether it makes rebates more or less frequent is not something anyone can assert from the text without a model. The surtax change is the part with an unambiguous effect.
Who is behind it
The first ten signers are a roll call of the Massachusetts business right: Christopher Anderson, president of the Massachusetts High Technology Council; Jim Stergios, executive director of the Pioneer Institute; Christopher Carlozzi of NFIB Massachusetts; Jon Hurst of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts; and Paul Craney of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance.
The committee, Taxpayers for an Affordable Massachusetts, is registered at 2400 District Avenue in Burlington, the same address as the Massachusetts High Technology Council.
The money, and why you cannot see most of it
The committee’s cash is almost nothing: $100,000, split evenly between the Massachusetts High Technology Council and the Pioneer Institute, both in late December 2025. It reported spending zero.
The real money arrived as an in-kind contribution. The committee reported $1,607,296.40 in in-kind support, of which $1,600,000 was “signature drive services” from a single entity: Massachusetts Opportunity Alliance, in five payments between September and October 2025:
- September 14: $100,000
- September 22: $250,000
- October 1: $250,000
- October 10: $500,000
- October 20: $500,000
OCPF lists the alliance’s principal officer as Adam Portnoy. The entity appears in the state’s entire campaign finance database exactly five times, in these five contributions.
It is not registered with OCPF in any category. It is a contributor, not a filer. Under Massachusetts law a contributing entity discloses nothing about where its own money came from; only the receiving committee reports what it got.
So the $1.6 million is visible precisely because it landed as an in-kind contribution to a registered ballot committee. The money behind it is not visible, and would not be however it was raised.
There is a structural reason this matters. Massachusetts has no independent expenditure channel for ballot question money at all. Under G.L. c. 55, an “independent expenditure” is spending on a candidate. Ballot question advocacy runs exclusively through ballot question committees, which means those committee reports are the complete public record. There is no second place to look.
Total identifiable support: $1,707,296.40, and 94 percent of it came from an entity whose donors are not disclosed.
The opposition has disclosed $75,000, then dissolved
Four committees registered to oppose Question 5. Three have filed no reports at all.
The fourth, Labor Leaders for Revenue Responsibility, raised $75,000 in December 2025, from the Massachusetts Teachers Association at $50,000, AFT Massachusetts at $15,000, and the AFL-CIO and SEIU State Council at $5,000 each. It then filed a dissolution report in February 2026 with a zero balance. The union money went somewhere. Where has not been disclosed.
As the filings stand, it is $1.71 million for and $75,000 against. That gap will almost certainly narrow.
Every figure here has a date, and a new one is coming
All of the above comes from year-end reports covering activity through December 31, 2025. No ballot question committee in Massachusetts has yet filed a 2026 report.
The next filing covers January 1 through August 30, 2026 and is due Friday, September 4. Nine months of the most intense spending, including the second signature drive and the fall campaign, becomes public that day. A pre-election report follows in late October.
What we could not establish
Two things, and both are worth saying plainly.
There is no official fiscal estimate for Question 5, and no reliable independent one. Massachusetts does not attach fiscal notes to initiative petitions. The only official figure will be a hundred-word statement from Administration and Finance in the September voter guide.
Be careful with one number circulating in coverage. A $5 billion annual figure attaches to a different petition, the income tax cut from 5 to 4 percent, which the Supreme Judicial Court struck from the ballot in June because the Attorney General’s summary failed to disclose that it would also cut capital gains taxes. That number does not belong to Question 5.
We also could not establish what Massachusetts Opportunity Alliance is beyond its OCPF designation, or Adam Portnoy’s role beyond being named its principal officer.
Where the polling stands
A UMass Amherst and WCVB poll of 800 registered voters in early August found 59 percent yes and 14 percent no.
The number underneath that is more telling: 10 percent of voters said they do not understand the question, second highest on the ballot, with another 16 percent undecided. A measure polling at four to one with a quarter of the electorate unsure of it is not a settled result.
Common questions
What does Question 5 actually change?
Two things. It re-anchors the state revenue cap to the previous year’s actual collections rather than the previous year’s cap, and it brings revenue from the surtax on incomes over $1 million inside the cap for the first time.
Would Question 5 repeal the millionaires tax?
No, not directly. The surtax still applies. But counting its revenue against a cap that never included it makes the cap far easier to exceed, which is why opponents describe the effect as undoing it.
What is Chapter 62F?
A 1986 voter-passed law capping how much tax revenue the state may keep, with the excess refunded. It has triggered twice, in 1987 and 2022, the latter returning about $3 billion.
Who is funding Question 5?
Of $1,707,296 in identifiable support, $1.6 million came as in-kind signature-gathering services from Massachusetts Opportunity Alliance, which is not registered with OCPF and does not disclose its own funders. The remaining $100,000 came from the Massachusetts High Technology Council and the Pioneer Institute.
When would it take effect?
Fiscal years beginning after June 30, 2027. The first determination under the new formula would come around September 2028.
Petition text and the Attorney General’s summary from House No. 5006 and certified Initiative Petition 25-17. Campaign finance from OCPF filings covering activity through December 31, 2025; 2026 reports are due September 4, 2026. Polling from UMass Amherst and WCVB, fielded August 5 to 12, 2026. The official ballot title, the one-sentence yes and no statements, and the Administration and Finance fiscal statement required by G.L. c. 54 § 53 appear in the Secretary’s September voter guide and are not quoted here. General information, not legal advice.