Newsletter Signup
Stay up to date on all the latest news from Boston.com
Should New Hampshire residents be paying Mass. income taxes? Tell us what you think.
N.H. lawmakers were hoping the Supreme Court would provide the answer.
NH/MASS. TAX BATTLE
The Supreme Court has handed down bad news for New Hampshire residents who’ve been telecommuting for work since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an attempt to settle the ongoing dispute between New Hampshire and Massachusetts over whether Granite State residents working remotely for Mass. companies should be charged income tax, the state took the case directly to the Supreme Court. The justices said yesterday that they would not hear the case.
Gov. Chris Sununu’s administration sued Massachusetts in October after Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration said it would hold workers who had started telecommuting during the pandemic to the state’s 5 percent income tax. Workers who had been working remotely prior to the pandemic would not have to pay the tax. There is no state income tax in New Hampshire.
Advertisement:
The move hasn’t been a popular one in New Hampshire, where about 15 percent of workers commute to Massachusetts for work. The Supreme Court’s decision was met with pushback from lawmakers in the Granite State, several of whom said the decision would “punish” workers in the state.
“People working full-time in New Hampshire should not have to pay another state’s income tax,” New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan said in a statement.
“By siding with the Biden Administration and allowing inappropriate taxation of NH citizens, the Supreme Court is setting a costly precedent,” Sununu told Boston.com in a statement. “This decision will have lasting ramifications for thousands of Granite State residents.”
Advertisement:
Do you think people working from their New Hampshire home for a Massachusetts business should have to pay Massachusetts income taxes? Let us know what you think about this issue by filling out the survey below or emailing us at [email protected] and we’ll feature your responses in a future article.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com