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IRS Tax Migration | How Money Walks

I haven't had a chance to look at the way the data is put together. It certainly seems intuitive to me. The states with the most outflows (colored red) generally have higher personal taxes and the states with the highest inflows (colored green) generally have lower personal taxes, including a lack of state income tax.

The state with the highest inflow, Florida, enjoys low personal income taxes and pretty nice weather and a fairly high level of personal freedom. Unfortunately, we also have a bunch of maroons running around. Win some, lose some.

I'd be curious to see a critique of the methodology (and might do one if I have some time).

We need more tax competition between States, to attract citizens and capital. Because Switzerland's central gov't taxes individuals at a lower rate than the cantons (akin to States), there is more competition between them, leading to lower taxes overall.

Texas is doing good, looks like everyone is moving out of Dallas county, not surprised

Lulz, nope, I was looking at the wrong article.

Great find Scrappy!

Pretty cool thanks for sharing. Mostly not surprising, but interesting to see capital flowing into the NW. What's the tax situation there?

States Without a State Income Tax

Some correlation with flows and that list.

It does explain why certain areas around here are beginning to remind me of home(L.A.). It seems that other than people leaving Nashville the others are all from S.California. Cool page.

^This.

WA uses a sales tax instead of an income tax, and it has a whole host of problems. People who say "OMG, a sales tax is the be all and end all of taxes!" really don't know what they are asking for.

A) I don't think anyone (worth listening to) believes a sales tax without an income tax is a "be all and end all" solution. They always seem to indicate spending needs to be a part of the equation but that a sales tax may be more fair.

B) What are some examples of this host of problems that Washington faces?

C) Should we infer that you believe a state income tax would alleviate or would have prevented some of the problems in (B)? If so, why or how?

In Louisiana, there is a STATE sales tax of 4%, and then each individual PARISH (county) adds it's own local sales tax. In Plaquemines Parish where I lived, it was 4%... making total sales tax 8%.

Louisiana also does this... making it the greatest State ever:

Act 453 of the 2009 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature enacted the “Annual Louisiana Second Amendment Weekend Holiday Act” that provides an exemption from state and local sales and use taxes on individuals’ purchases of firearms, ammunition and hunting supplies on the first Friday through Sunday of each September.

Louisiana Sales Tax Holiday : Hot Topics : Louisiana Department of Revenue

I'd recommend googling for more info, such as Study: Washington state has USA’s most regressive taxes | Strange Bedfellows — Politics News - seattlepi.com

Well, the poorest here pay as much as eight times as the richest (Yes, 8 times more, that's NOT a typo!) as a percentage of their income in tax. The idea of everyone paying the same % of income as an income tax doesn't bug me, but sales taxes are severely regressive - this is why you see so much big money moving into WA. Taxes as low as 2% look awfully tempting to them.

Come on; don't be that guy. We're having a discussion. You can present a cogent (or ridiculous) point and cite a source, or link to an article relevant to a point you are making, but don't just say "Washington state has problems; google it."


So the major problem that Washington state is having is that their state tax system is regressive and that is unfair? That is pretty much all I got out of that article.

• Is this negatively affecting Washington state's economic growth?
• Is there higher than normal unemployment in WA?
• Has this manifested in greater income disparity in WA vs somewhere that has highly progressive state taxes (and is seeing negative AGI flows according to the site in the OP), like CA?

Don't tell me to google it unless you've googled it yourself and know the answers, because you are the one that made a point of Washington state having a "host of problems" that are presumably tied to the lack of a state income tax. :)

Sales tax is not regressive in the least, so long as the sales tax is pretty much the same. Also, if there is an exemption for foodstuffs (no sales tax on food items) then your sales tax is actually progressive, as someone who spends 10% of their income on food is going to pay a far lower % of their income on sales tax than someone who spends 0.1% of their income on food - the other 99.9% of their income is spent on things which are taxed. Someone who makes 100x as much money isn't going to consume 100x as much food.

The severely regressive part though is property taxes. If there is no income tax but a higher sales and higher property tax to offset that fact, then, while the sales tax is slightly progressive, its the property tax which is significantly regressive. The reason behind this is: Someone who makes 100x more isn't going to live in 100x more house. Chances are, someone who makes 30k/year is going to live in a $100k house, and someone who makes 3 million/year is going to live in a house closer to $1-2 million. While my numbers aren't based on any evidence, it is a logical argument. The person making 100x as much (in this case 3 million/year) is living in a house that is valued at about 20x as much. If both homes were taxed at the same rate (lets say 3%/year), then the multi-millionaire is paying 2% of his income to property taxes, while the middle class guy is paying 6.67% of his income to property taxes.

While the tax system as a whole might be regressive, sales taxes are generally anything but regressive, unless there are tax breaks on "luxury" items...

It's the guys making billions of dollars per year that are paying 1/8th as much tax as the "middle class" - they live in homes that they could afford on one week's salary. profit.

The problem with income tax is the definition of "income". It is how fat cats with huge passive income pay lower rates than their personal assistants. And it provides lots of opportunity for tax breaks for the politically connected.

One nice thing about a sales tax is it taxes consumption. A guy with a huge income who spends a lot pays a lot of tax. If same guy lives frugally he pays a lot less, but then the money he *doesn't* spend is deposited and loaned out, or he invests it somewhere.

But all this discussion is less important than the discussion of how much of GDP the gov't ought to control. Right now as a total it's close to 40%, which to me is way unacceptable. It's a drag on the economy.

But zombie statists like blaen will bleat that a powerful central gov't must "provide" welfare, warfare, regulations up the yinyang, studies of homosexual endangered toads, and birth control for ho's.

I reject this premise. There may be a very few super high income earners who have lower effective tax rates than their personal assistants, but it's because they artificially reduce their tax rates via huge charitable gifts. Not through passive income pay.

BTW - let's define passive income pay. It's dividends or distributions received from shares of stock you own or units of a partnership, bond income, and/or capital gains. In other words, it is the fruit of investment or savings.

Don't buy in to that leftist, redistributionist media trope. :party:


I'm going to skip the rest of your post because it's mostly nonsense.

When I moved from Denton County Texas to Washington State (both states with no income tax) my total property tax was half what I was paying in Texas for a house that cost twice as much. Sales tax was about the same. Household property taxes doubled when Bush was governor because corporate property taxes were cut drastically and school systems were failing due to lack of funding. Hear however a big oil refinery is a major source for tax revenue in the county something you would never find in Texas where the oil companies decide who gets elected. I also lived in Arlington Texas when a 2% additional sales tax was levied to Build a Baseball stadium for a team owned by GW Bush at the time. I think the only business venture He made money on that didn’t go bankrupt.

Works until the average person cannot live an average life without a hand full of private equity plutocrats profiting and compounding wealth from nothing other than the common folk going on with their daily life. Why should somebody doing nothing more than skimming profits off of businesses by leveraging capital pay half the tax on that income that somebody working for their income pays?

We've danced this dance before, Mr. Bundy. I've already beaten my head against one proverbial wall today and I don't have the endurance to do it with you tonight. Let's bring it back on topic...


I'm still waiting to hear from blaen (or you) on the details of the woes facing Washington state and how they might be related to the lack of a state income tax.

It just becomes a wonderful Fascist system where the people who own everything make profits freely and never pay for anything government provides. The people who work however pay for everything and there oportunity to become significant owners themselves is nearly non existant.

You are just spouting unsubstantiated, hyperbolic, near-nonsense that is virtually unrelated in any way to the topic at hand. It's just as persuasive as if I said that without any government taxation, entrepeneurial risk-taking and the private free market would unleash all kinds of innovation and allow any and everyone the same opportunity - if not the same results - to flourish.

Unsubstantiated, hyperbolic, near-nonsense.


California, with their high and highly progressive state taxes, is in a much better economic and or income disparity and/or personal freedom and/or hippy lovefest position - or whatever metric you want to use - than Washington state, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Alaska, et al? And that better position - using some metric you can pick - is because of their high and highly progressive state taxes?