Taxes and spending
Spend it like it's ours.It is.
Maine's top income tax rate starts at a middle-class income, every paycheck now carries a new premium, and Augusta's budget has grown faster than prices. The question isn't only how much. It's what each dollar accomplished.
The income tax
The top rate isn't a tax on the rich.
Maine's top rate. For a single filer it starts at $64,850 of taxable income, about $86,000 in pay; for a married couple, $129,750 of taxable income.
The lowest rate, on a single filer's first $27,400 of taxable income.
A single nurse or electrician earning about $86,000 pays 7.15 percent on the next dollar.
In 2026 Augusta also added a 2 percent surcharge on taxable income over $1 million for a single filer. It doesn't touch an average family. The 7.15 percent rate does.
The paycheck premium
A new line on every paycheck.
The paid family and medical leave premium on wages, since January 1, 2025. An employer may take up to half of it from each paycheck.
How long the program collected before it paid its first benefit, on May 1, 2026. It was built to collect first.
Source: Maine Department of Labor
The budget
Faster than prices.
Augusta's General Fund for 2026 and 2027, with this year's supplemental budget. For 2018 and 2019 it was $7.2 billion.
In dollars. Prices rose about a third over the same stretch, so after inflation the General Fund is up about a quarter, and about a fifth for every Mainer.
How far next year's spending runs past Maine's own spending limit ($159 million this year). The Legislature suspended the limit to pass it.
Some of that is what voters asked for at the ballot box, like the state paying 55 percent of school costs, which they required in 2004. Some of it went back to towns to hold down property taxes: revenue sharing grew from $74 million a year to about $280 million. And some of it is neither. Before any line grows again, someone should have to say what it accomplished.
Sources: Office of Fiscal and Program Review, General Fund status with the 2026 supplemental budget, August 2026; Office of Fiscal and Program Review, ten-year history of General Fund appropriations; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI for All Urban Consumers (series CUUR0000SA0); U.S. Census Bureau, state population estimates (2018 intercensal; Vintage 2025); Maine State Treasurer, municipal revenue sharing, FY2019 and FY2025
At the register
The rate held. The list grew.
Maine's general sales tax rate, the same since October 2013.
The year Maine started taxing streaming. Since January 1, video and music subscriptions carry the 5.5 percent sales tax, like a DVD or a CD always did.
The year Maine made Amazon and other online marketplaces collect the tax at checkout, on every taxable order they handle, even from sellers with no presence in Maine. The tax was always owed on paper. Now it's collected.
Downloads count too: e-books, songs, movies and apps are taxed as products transferred electronically. So the rate hasn't moved, but more of what Mainers buy now pays it. In fairness, the 2025 budget cut the tax on cable, satellite TV and phone service from 6 to 5.5 percent. And this year Augusta is mailing a one-time $300 payment to full-year residents with incomes under $50,000, or $100,000 for married couples filing jointly, to give back part of what they pay in sales and excise taxes.
Sources: Maine Revenue Services, sales and use tax rates; 36 M.R.S. §1811, sales tax rates; Maine Revenue Services, General Information Bulletin 109, September 2019 (marketplace facilitators, 36 M.R.S. §1951-C); Maine Revenue Services, General Information Bulletin 115, October 17, 2025 (streaming); Maine Revenue Services, Affordability Payment Program
Next door
New Hampshire is an hour away.
New Hampshire doesn't tax wages, and it has repealed its tax on interest and dividends. For a young family in York County, that's a short drive.
What we'd do
Common sense with the public's money.
Move the top rate off the middle class.
The 7.15 percent rate should start well above what a nurse or an electrician earns.
A real spending limit.
General Fund growth no faster than inflation plus population, unless two-thirds of the Legislature votes to go past it.
Show the results.
Every large program reports each year what it accomplished, in numbers, before its budget grows.
Give back what's left over.
When revenue comes in above the budget, return it to the people who paid it.
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