Thanks! Could you share the link to where it has that info? I'm curious to see if we can at least get credit for my partner's sticker since he did do his this year

I actually got a hold of someone from MA vehicle check (https://www.mavehiclecheck.com/contact) over the phone and he explained that because our car was previously registered in MA, in their records it's been since 2018 since our cars were last inspected. This means that my car was long overdue for an inspection. I was supposed to notify the RMV when we moved to NH, so they could wipe our car records clean. This would mean that when I returned to MA, they wouldn't find the really old inspection date. Instead we get to pay $35 per car to get them newly inspected in January 🙃

Gonna leave this post here in case anyone runs into a similar issue and is confused.

I've seen this article and I think I understand the new process, but I don't think it applies to us? Neither cars had expired stickers, and yet both got stickers for 1/2023