With the dawn of a new year, Massachusetts residents could see more money in their pockets, more clarity from prospective employers about salaries for open jobs, and circus acts free of elephants and other exotic animals.
A raft of laws took effect Wednesday and beyond in 2025, promising to reshape everything from what people and businesses pay in taxes to how students earn their high school diplomas. New Year’s Day also marked the start of a new legislative session, when lawmakers will push even more changes into law in the months and years to come.
Here are the new laws to watch — and, in one case, one that’s ending before it really even started.
Tax changes
Parents of children, as well as caretakers for disabled adults or seniors, will soon fully realize an enhanced tax credit lawmakers passed in the fall of 2023 as part of a $1 billion tax package.
Billed at the time as the country’s most generous universal child and dependent tax credit, the law bumped what taxpayers could claim per dependent last tax season from $180 to $310. In 2025, they’ll be able to claim $440 per dependent when they file their taxes.
That means a family with four dependent children could claim $1,760. Before the law passed in 2023, that same family would have been able to claim just $360.
How the state calculates corporate taxes will also change. With some exceptions for certain industries, corporate tax has been calculated using three factors: a company’s local employment, property holdings, and in-state sales. Starting in 2025, the state will instead use what’s known as a “single sales factor,’’ relying solely on the amount of a company’s sales within the state.
Generally, the new approach benefits companies with large in-state operations that do business in many states. Several big Massachusetts employers, such as Dunkin’, Santander, and State Street, were among those that pressed the Legislature to make the change.
Pay transparency
Governor Maura Healey signed a law in late July designed to mandate salary transparency in a bid to close racial and gender wage gaps in the state. A key part of that new law, however, technically doesn’t take effect until this fall.
Starting Oct. 29, employers with 25 full-time employees or more will have to disclose salary ranges in their job postings and protect an employee’s right to ask for salary ranges in the workplace. The law also includes various reporting requirements that come into effect before then.
The lag was intentional. Lawmakers included a provision in the law stating that the new employer disclosure mandate wouldn’t start until one year after its effective date. But because they didn’t attach a so-called emergency preamble — language that allows a law to take effect immediately after it’s signed — the law didn’t technically come online until October, or 90 days after Healey put her signature to it.
Voter-approved measures
Auditor Diana DiZoglio disputes this timeline, but under Secretary of State William F. Galvin’s interpretation, a trio of ballot questions passed by voters takes effect this week.
They include a measure striking down the state’s long-standing MCAS graduation requirement and first-of-its-kind language that allows Uber and Lyft drivers to join labor unions. A third ballot question specifies that DiZoglio, a first-term Democrat, has the authority to audit the Legislature, though exactly when she will gain the power continues to be the subject of fierce debate.
DiZoglio and some Beacon Hill watchdogs assert that the law was supposed to take effect in early December, or 30 days after the election itself.
Galvin and the Legislature’s lawyers, however, say the 30-day clock started when state officials certified the election results on Dec. 4, meaning it takes effect Friday.
Regardless, it’s likely the new law will be subject to litigation. DiZoglio said she would pursue a lawsuit if the Legislature doesn’t comply with her audit requests. Lawmakers, in turn, have argued that DiZoglio’s attempt to audit the chambers would violate the constitutional separation of powers between the branches.
Who’s a parent?
A new law expanding who legally qualifies as a parent took effect Wednesday, providing what advocates and lawmakers have called a significant policy victory for LGBTQ+ parents who can face hurdles in establishing parentage.
The language asserts that every child has the “same rights and protections under law to parentage,’’ regardless of their parents’ marital status, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation. The law also affords protections regardless of the circumstances of birth, including if a child was conceived through assisted reproduction, such as in-vitro fertilization or surrogacy.
Before the change, nonbiological parents, at times, would need to formally adopt their children to secure the same parental rights as a birth parent.
The circus isn’t coming . . . with big animals
Also on New Year’s Day, legislation banning circuses from using elephants, tigers, and other animals in their acts took effect.
Massachusetts became the 11th state to enact such a ban on using big cats and other exotic creatures in traveling shows when Healey signed the bill in August. More than a dozen towns and cities in the state had already adopted similar restrictions.
The new law covers elephants, bears, big cats such as lions and clouded leopards, “non-human primates,’’ and giraffes. The law would not apply to zoos or any other facility where the animal is considered a “resident.’’
A short-lived law
Legislators passed a law this past fall that’s designed to prevent so-called deepfakes in campaign videos and ads. In reality, it will actually never address the issues it’s targeting.
As part of a sweeping jobs bill, lawmakers included language that bans campaigns, PACs, and other entities from distributing “with actual malice’’ deceptive audio or visual media about a candidate or the election process within 90 days of an election.
The “actual malice’’ standard covers instances in which someone releases something knowing that it’s false or with reckless disregard of whether it is false or not.
It’s also intended to be temporary. Legislative leaders included language repealing the provision on Feb. 1.
That’s because they envisioned the provision as a pilot program for the November election, said Betsy Wall, chief of staff to Senator Barry Finegold, who was one of the bill’s chief negotiators.
But the law will have an even shorter shelf life than they intended. Given legislative leaders spent months negotiating the wider bill, the language didn’t actually pass until after the Nov. 5 vote. Ultimately, the law will have been on the books for all of 73 days, without covering a state election.
Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout.
