Massachusetts tax refunds to begin in November

10/31/22 by Ashlyn Wang

The Baker administration announced Friday that refunds totaling $2.941 billion in excess tax revenue to taxpayers will begin Tuesday, Nov. 1.

Image Courtesy of MGN.

The refund is provided under Chapter 62F, a Massachusetts General Law requiring that excess tax collected to be returned to taxpayers when the total amount of taxes collected in a fiscal year exceeds the tax cap for that year.

In the fiscal year 2022, Massachusetts’s total tax revenue is nearly $42 billion, about $3 billion more than the revenue ceiling of nearly $39 billion. Taxpayers who paid their 2021 individual income taxes and completed their 2021 tax returns by Sept. 15, 2023, will be eligible for a refund. Approximately 3 million taxpayers will receive a tax return, according to State House News Service.

Taxpayers who file their tax forms prior to Oct. 17 can expect to receive their refunds in mid-December, according to the Massachusetts government website. Eligible taxpayers will receive about 14% of the amount of state individual income tax they are liable to pay in 2021, which will be automatically refunded by direct deposit or by mailing a check after filing their forms.

Taxpayers can use the refund estimator to estimate the amount of refund they may receive.

This is the second time the law has been triggered since it was enacted in 1986 by voters, more than three decades after it was first triggered in 1987.