Massachusetts passed a 4% millionaire's tax last year. Now every public-school student is going to get free lunch.

• Massachusetts passed a 4% tax on people who make more than $1 million a year.
• Revenue from the new income tax is being used to give kids lunch and breakfast at school.

Public-school students in Massachusetts are set to get free lunch and breakfast thanks to a new 4% tax on people who earn more than $1 million.

Massachusetts voted for a constitutional amendment to tax high earners in 2022. It went into effect at the beginning of 2023.

Appropriation of the proceeds from the tax is subject to the state legislature, but lawmakers are expected to use it for public education and infrastructure repairs, the Boston television station WCVB reported.

State House News Service, an independently owned news wire, reported that $1 billion of the state's record $56.2 billion fiscal budget for 2024 came from its new 4% tax on millionaires. Gov. Maura Healey signed the budget Wednesday, making Massachusetts the eighth state to adopt a plan for free school lunch since the expiration of federal free school lunches that had emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The outlet reported that a portion of the $1 billion gathered from the new income tax would be used to provide all public-school students in Massachusetts with free breakfast and lunch. Some of the money would also be allocated to help undocumented immigrants who went to high school in Massachusetts qualify for lower in-state tuition rates, SHNS reported.

WCVB reported that state lawmakers agreed to use $523 million of revenue from the new tax on education and set aside $477 million for transportation.

In February, President Joe Biden urged lawmakers to pass his billionaires' tax proposal, which would impose a minimum 20% tax on households with a net worth of more than $100 million.

Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told CNBC the proposal would target "big corporations and the wealthiest Americans," while protecting people who made less than $400,000 a year from tax increases.

Biden also signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in February, which included a 15% minimum tax on corporations earning more than $1 billion.