Two business-backed measures to trim the state’s income tax and increase the frequency of taxpayer refunds cleared a key milestone this week, with supporters claiming they received more than enough signatures to make the ballot a year from now.

The Mass Opportunity Alliance, the group behind both measures, announced it collected more than 87,000 signatures for a ballot question that would cut the income tax to 4 percent from 5 percent. MOA gathered them in time for Wednesday’s deadline to submit voter signatures to local town halls for verification. That’s a solid cushion above the nearly 75,000 signatures needed to advance ballot questions at this stage.

Likewise, MOA said it collected more than 86,000 signatures for a separate question that would change a four-decade-old state law that requires taxpayer refunds to go out if a certain revenue threshold has been met, with a goal of keeping a lid on state spending increases. Until now, the refunds have only gone out twice. But the new measure would likely trigger refunds far more frequently.

The alliance was launched last year by the Massachusetts High Technology Council, a prominent business group known for its anti-tax stances, and the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, a group of high-powered chief executives, along with the Pioneer Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank. They formed MOA partly in response to the passage in 2022 of the so-called millionaires tax, a surcharge on high-earners’ income taxes.

“Just based on the ability to collect a large number of signatures, it means there’s an appetite shared by taxpayers/voters that we need a course correction here,” said Chris Anderson, president of the high tech council.

Gathering these signatures, done by a contractor on MOA’s behalf, was arguably the toughest hurdle to clear. After the signatures get certified, the Legislature will have until May to pass legislation to address the questions. If no legislative deal has been reached, MOA will have to gather nearly 12,500 additional signatures to get the questions before voters next fall. (Another ballot question being pushed by Pioneer senior fellow Andrew Mikula to allow more starter homes to be built around the state also apparently cleared the first signature hurdle this week.)

MOA’s stated concern is how the millionaires tax and other state policies are hurting competitiveness. The Washington-based Tax Foundation backs up this claim, reporting that Massachusetts has been stuck among the 10 least tax-friendly states since the millionaires tax took effect, even after the Legislature passed some modest tax reforms in 2023.

“Even other organizations that aren’t with us recognize that we have a competitiveness problem,” Anderson said. “Everybody senses that we’re heading in the wrong direction. … Given our success [with] this signature threshold, we can begin a conversation about where to go, not only in the next year, but beyond the 2026 election cycle.”

Anderson said he’s also interested in paring back or eliminating the Massachusetts estate tax, which remains among the most onerous of any state. And he said he’s eager to resist an effort by progressive groups to significantly raise a state tax on offshore profits. (Repealing the millionaires tax would be more difficult, because it requires a change in the state constitution.)

The alliance, as a 501(c)(6) organization, doesn’t need to disclose its donors, but a ballot campaign committee will need to do so. MOA formally established a committee to handle fundraising for both questions, Taxpayers for an Affordable Massachusetts, on Wednesday.

The state collected nearly $27 billion in income taxes last year, supporting a major chunk of the overall budget. Dropping from 5 percent to 4 percent would presumably shave one-fifth of that amount, more than $5 billion. The proposed tax cut would be phased in over three years, as stated in the ballot question, and Anderson said resulting economic growth would offset most or all of the loss in revenue.

That’s a big point of disagreement between MOA and the progressive groups lining up to oppose these questions. Phineas Baxandall, policy director at the left-leaning Massachusetts Budget & Policy Center think tank, said such a big reduction to the income tax would inevitably lead to painful budget cuts.

“I think any time you offer people free money, it always sounds good,” Baxandall said. “If you have to explain where the $5 billion in cuts from the income tax will come from, that’s a lot harder. … There’s no $5 billion ‘Department of Waste, Fraud and Abuse’ just waiting to be cut.”

Baxandall notes that these two ballot questions are advancing at a time when the state budget is particularly precarious because of changes in federal assistance, primarily for Medicaid, but also for other social services such as SNAP food assistance.

“We’re going to be trying to backfill what we can,” Baxandall said, “and needing every penny.”

Max Page, the president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, said his union’s board has already voted unanimously to oppose these two measures. The MTA provided much of the money behind the millionaires tax effort, and Page said the results helped many people go to college, supported early childcare, and improved transit, among other benefits.

“I call them the ‘Opportunity Destroying Alliance’ [because] these would be devastating cuts,” Page said of MOA’s two ballot questions. “It is, to me, completely unconscionable that they would be initiating this.”