The state budget secretary threw out the caution flag Thursday and warned lawmakers against getting too excited about state tax collections that are ahead of schedule by more than half a billion dollars.
The Department of Revenue reported last week that it collected $23.97 billion in tax revenue through seven months of fiscal year 2026 — $611 million or 2.6% higher than collections at the same checkpoint last fiscal year and $532 million or 2.3% ahead of the Healey administration’s year-to-date benchmarks.
During a hearing on Gov. Maura Healey’s proposal to delay the state’s conformity to federal tax code changes and therefore avoid a loss of $442 million in revenue this fiscal year, Chairman Rep. Adrian Madaro asked if the administration’s plan would change if revenues continue to outperform expectations.
Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz said it does not, and pointed out that while January was a “good month,” December collections came in below benchmark.
“So when you take it in whole, I think we feel we’re right where we need to be in order to hit our benchmarks for the year and make sure that we can ensure that we have sufficient revenue to support the expenditures in the budget,” he said. “So while revenues may be above benchmark as of this date, I think almost two-thirds of all of our revenues are back loaded. March and April are our biggest revenue months, and so we have a lot of collections left to go.”
Gorzkowicz reminded the committee that fiscal year 2025 ended with tax collections above benchmark by $52 million (on a revenue base of about $42 billion). But through January 2025, fiscal 2025 tax collections were running ahead of benchmark by $566 million.
“So this very much feels like what we saw in fiscal year ’25. We ended the year in a good place. We didn’t have to do a lot to balance the budget, but we also didn’t have a lot of room for error,” Gorzkowicz said. “So I think we feel like this is tracking very similar to what we saw in ’25. And so while the revenues are above benchmark, I would ask people to hold their breath. We got a lot of collections ahead of us.”