Do Wealthy People Move to Reduce their Taxes?

Thank you to Julie Garber of Julie’s Wills and Estate Planning Blog for her post alerting us to this NYT article:

Julie writes: “Taxes Not Seen as Making the Rich Flee New York, so states an article by Nicholas Confessore that appeared last week in The New York Times. It seems that lawmakers in Albany have been toying with the idea of collecting an additional income tax on “rich” New Yorkers, and the gist of the article is that there is very little evidence to support the notion that when a state raises its income tax on the wealthy, they flee in droves to states where there is a lower income tax rate or no income tax at all.”

I agree with Julie Garber – if they asked estate planning attorneys they would know that taxes are very often the most important consideration for folks changing their domicile. Florida has no income tax. And what is New York City’s? There is both a state income tax of up to 8.14% and a city income tax, up to 4.00%. Come on – you mean no one thinks about that?