On June 18, 2026, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) held that a proposed initiative petition, No. 25-18, to reduce the Commonwealth’s personal income tax rate from 5% to 4% cannot appear on the November 2026 ballot. In Lewis Finfer & others v. Attorney General & others, SJC-13885, the Court found that the attorney general’s summary of the initiative was materially misleading because that summary said that the rate reduction would not apply to capital gains, while the measure would have actually had the effect of reducing the rate on most long-term capital gains.
Ballot questions have become an increasingly important vehicle for tax policy in Massachusetts, including most recently the 2022 voter-approved constitutional amendment imposing an additional tax on income over $1 million. Massachusetts tax rate changes now move through the initiative petition process far more frequently than they do through the ordinary legislative process. While this may provide greater continuity for tax rates, it also introduces a different set of hurdles to legislation that changes tax rates.
The case illustrates the technical and absolute nature of Massachusetts’ ballot question process under Article 48 of the Amendments to the Massachusetts Constitution, in which the attorney general’s summary plays a vital role in signature collection and a material defect in that summary is not curable after signatures are collected.
What Happened?
The initiative sought to reduce the personal income tax rate on certain income from 5% to 4% over three tax years. The attorney general’s summary described the measure as lowering the rates on “(1) personal taxable income consisting of interest and dividends, and (2) personal taxable income other than interest, dividends or capital gain income, such as wages and salaries.”
Massachusetts General Law 62, Section 2(b) classifies personal income into three statutory categories that are taxed under interrelated rules:
- Part A: interest, dividends, and those capital gains that are not Part C income, which are colloquially known as short-term capital gains;
- Part B: all income that is not Part A or Part C income; and
- Part C: long-term capital gains, i.e., gains from the sale or exchange of capital assets that have been held for more than one year.
Under Massachusetts law, the Part B rate of 5% also applies to most Part C long-term capital gains. M.G.L. c. 62, s. 4 (c) (“Part C taxable income shall be taxed at the same rate as provided for in paragraph (b)”).
Because of this relationship, the SJC concluded that the attorney general’s summary was significantly misleading. Reducing the Part B rate from 5% to 4% would have also reduced the rate on most long-term capital gains, despite the summary’s insistence that the rate reduction applied to personal taxable income other than interest, dividends, or capital gain income.
The SJC found the summary’s error to be material because capital gains taxation may be economically significant to voters evaluating a proposed income tax reduction. In the court’s view, the summary’s omission and phrasing were likely to affect how voters understood the initiative. While the summary may have been intended to mirror the statute’s “technical tax categories,” as argued by the attorney general, the Court concluded that “the summary translates those categories into ordinary language in a way that materially misstates the proposal's effect.” SJC-13885, at 11-12. The Court did not require any specific factual showing, however, in support of this finding. Instead, the Court found speculations that “fiscal distributional consequences of that reduction may matter to voters who favor the petition, voters who oppose it, and voters still deciding” to be satisfactory for a materiality showing. Id. at 15-16. The Court concluded that while Article 48 does not require “definitive proof that the error will change the election outcome,” it nevertheless requires a “fair summary” that was lacking here. Id. at 16.
Because a reasonable voter might read the summary to mean that capital gains were unaffected by an income tax rate reduction, the Court held that the summary failed to provide the fair and intelligent description required under Article 48. The initiative therefore cannot proceed to the ballot.
No Post-Signature Cure
The decision also underscores the strict procedural requirements governing Massachusetts ballot initiatives. The Court rejected the proponent-intervenors’ suggestion that the Court allow the attorney general to revise the summary voluntarily. The Court pointed out that while Article 48 expressly provides a process for amending an initiative petition if not passed by the legislature, Article 48 contains no comparable provision for revising a deficient summary. Under Article 48, the summary appears both on the signature forms used by voters to request that the petition be placed on the ballot, and on the ballot itself. The Court pointed out that it was at least fair to question whether the more than 85,000 signatures collected in support of the initiative petition were validly collected, in light of the problematic summary. Id. at 18.
Conclusion
Finfer illustrates the technical demands that Article 48 imposes both on ballot question proponents and the Attorney General’s Office. Ballot questions concerning Massachusetts’ tax laws may continue to play a central role in Massachusetts tax policy going forward.
For future Massachusetts tax initiatives, Finfer underscores that precision in both statutory drafting and voter-facing summaries is essential from the outset.