Supreme Court Refuses To Hear New Hampshire’s Challenge to Massachusetts Taxing its Residents

The Supreme Court declined to hear New Hampshire’s challenge to Massachusetts’s pandemic-era policy of taxing out-of-state residents who used to work in Massachusetts but switched to telecommuting from their New Hampshire homes during the pandemic.

Billions of dollars in income taxes paid by people who worked from home during the pandemic were at stake in this case, and conceivably in other states such as New York that even in the absence of a public health emergency tax nonresident income.

According to New Hampshire, the Massachusetts tax rule goes against New Hampshire’s state sovereignty, its residents’ economic interests, and runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s commerce clause and the 14th Amendment’s due process clause. New Hampshire had asked the court for an injunction preventing Massachusetts from enforcing the rule and requiring it to refund all funds collected under it.

Unlike its high-tax neighbor to the south, the Granite State has no state income or sales tax as part of an intentional strategy to remain economically competitive with other states.

According to one estimate, 120,000 New Hampshire residents who used to commute to Massachusetts every workday worked from home because of the pandemic but still had to pay the 5 percent income tax in Massachusetts. Massachusetts issued an emergency order retroactively effective March 10, 2020, near the beginning of the pandemic, and continued to tax those individuals even when they stayed at home in New Hampshire to work. New Hampshire said it was unfair for Massachusetts to do this because the taxpayers were not using the Massachusetts services the taxes fund.

“Massachusetts cannot balance its budget on the backs of our citizens, punish our workers for making the decision to work from home and keep themselves and their families and those around them safe,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, said

If these people had been working at the physical plant in
Massachusetts, and are still get their pay from there, I don’t
see that this is some form of taking away a portion of
traditional New Hampshire’s income base.

It would be taking away from Massachusetts’s traditional
income base, if the New Hampshire suite were to prevail.

It does seem like a gray area has developed here though.

For instance, many seniors get retirement payments from out
of state, but their income is seen as income in their
home state.

The traditions are somewhat confusing on this topic.

“Mass. is proud of it’s taxes and RINO Sunu is probably wrong o this one!

Politically, I have nothing good to say about either state.”

Then you haven’t been paying attention to NH. Sununu is not NH and we are on a roll.

We just lowered taxes on businesses, increased educational freedom by expanding educational savings accounts, outlawed CRT, are phasing out interest and dividends taxes that hit retirees, are actually giving property tax relief, and finally banned late-term abortions (none after 24 weeks)!

New Hampshire has no standing.

They should just tax Massachusetts residents, and give the money to New Hampshire residents that were wrongly taxed...

Then Massachusetts would have no standing.

(Sarc.... Never going to let Supreme Court run away from their cowardly no standing ruling! Hopefully someone chisels NO STANDING on the tombstones of each coward justice that voted not to hear the election challenge cases!)

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