
What Repubs and Dems Can Learn from “The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight” - severine
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/what-republicans-and-democrats-can-learn-myth-millionaire-tax-flight
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severine
tl;dr:

> While everyone seems aware of a handful of high-profile millionaires
> decamping to low-tax states for tax reasons, in truth few move in response
> to state tax rates. Young examined tax data from every millionaire in the
> United States over thirteen years. He found that, even over that long time
> horizon, only 0.3% of all millionaires, on net, moved to a lower tax state.
> A larger share—about 2.5 percent-- move from one state to another each year,
> but most do not migrate for tax reasons. [...]

> While blue states are changing tax policy [SALT deduction workarounds] in
> response to what is largely a myth, red states seem blind to the very real
> consequences of their tax and spending policies. There, years of tax cuts
> (often tilted toward higher-income households), along with balanced budget
> requirements, have created funding crises in their education systems. Red
> state budgets tend to be very regressive – giving benefits to the already
> well off at the expense of others, especially the poor. But as Young points
> out, “cutting funding for education to finance tax cuts for the wealthy is a
> classic intergenerational transfer from the young to the old.” As such, the
> policies ignore who really is mobile across state lines: young people, who
> are leaving red states in droves: "The most mobile people in the country are
> young college graduates – who have annual cross-state migration rates four
> times as high as millionaires (12 percent versus 2.5 percent)."

