Healey releases ad touting tax cuts

Underscores her campaign pledge

As Massachusetts residents prepare to file their taxes ahead of the deadline next month, Governor Maura Healey’s political arm has released a digital advertisement boasting the most significant piece of legislation she has signed as governor — a $1 billion tax package that became law last year.

The 30-second ad, which will run on sites including YouTube and Hulu starting Monday, is titled “Healey Tax Cuts — Saving You Money.”

It underscores her campaign promise to make the state more affordable and will run until early April, a campaign official said. It’s the first advertisement from her campaign since she was sworn in last year.

“The tax season, everyone is going to benefit from the Healey tax cuts,” a narrator says in the ad, “Saving money for seniors, families, and businesses.”

Aside from the annual state budget — which is constitutionally required — the tax bill was the heftiest proposal Healey has inked into law.

It boosts tax breaks for families, seniors, renters, and others while slashing how much the state taxes profits on short-term investments. It will save hundreds of thousands of taxpayers a collective $561 million this fiscal year, according to legislative officials, with expectations that the total savings would eventually climb to just over $1.02 billion once it goes into full effect in fiscal year 2027, which begins July 1, 2026.

It reshapes the estate tax, currently considered one of the nation’s strictest, by hiking the threshold at which the tax kicks in from $1 million to $2 million, and it offers a tax credit that seeks to offset the so-called cliff effect, in which an entire estate is taxed once it hits the threshold, not just the amount over the line.

While the final tax bill didn’t deliver everything Healey promised — it includes a scaled-down version of her proposed child and dependent tax credit and a more modest version of her capital gains tax cut — it was still the first significant tax cut in more than two decades.

In an email to supporters boosting the ad, Healey reminded voters that “Tax Day is in less than one month.”

“That means our new cuts will be at work, representing $1 billion in savings for taxpayers,” she wrote in the email, with the subject line “Saving You Money.”

“I believe government should be there to make life easier, not harder. That’s why I’m proud that we’ve delivered these tax cuts,” Healey wrote. “I know that we have a lot more to do. We’re going to keep working to lower costs, build more housing, and make sure that Massachusetts is a place you can always call home — and your children, and their children.”

Tax reform was the topic of the first television ad of her campaign, in which she promised to “cut taxes” as governor. She called the state’s “economic health” her top priority in a gubernatorial debate, and soon after she won the election, she put tax reform at the top of her to-do list.

“My first act,” Healey said at the time, “day one.”

The tax bill, aside from the state budget, was the heftiest proposal Governor Healey has inked into law.