Posted on 03/19/2009 1:49:17 PM PDT by reaganaut1
It is perhaps the most potent argument offered by those who oppose increasing the income tax on wealthy New Yorkers: If you raise it, they will flee.
That case has been made repeatedly by Gov. David A. Paterson, who says that higher taxes should be a last resort. It has been featured in a campaign by Taxpayers for an Affordable New York, a coalition of real estate and business interests. And it has been on the mind of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, New York City’s richest person, who said in a radio interview, “You can’t tax too much those that can move.”
Yet there is surprisingly little evidence to support the proposition that rich New Yorkers would bolt if forced to pay higher income taxes. Though tracking the movement of wealthy taxpayers from state to state is difficult, experts on public finance and migration say they have yet to document a substantial “rich drain” in states that have raised income taxes in recent years.
“At the level we’re talking about, there’s no quantitative evidence that it affects the mobility decisions of affluent taxpayers,” said Douglas S. Massey, a demographer at Princeton University and president of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Pressured by enormous budget deficits, officials in Illinois, Hawaii, Wisconsin and New Jersey are considering new taxes on the rich. Lawmakers in Albany have discussed several proposals, including increases for those earning more than $250,000.
But even experts who oppose such taxes on other grounds — out of fear that they will retard economic growth and innovation, or encourage lawmakers to indulge in bouts of new spending — concede that there is not much evidence that raising taxes on the wealthy would drive out a significant number.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If this is true, why are so many Hampton houses up for sale?
Also why so many NYC expensive condos dropping in price?
Sure, raising the taxes now may not cause them to flee. But when taxes are raised again next year, and then the year after that, and the year after that, etc., etc., they WILL start leaving.
A blind man can see...
Never mind.
that is why I think we should eliminate the income tax and just institute “corporate taxes” for those EVIIIIILL corporations.
They will just pass the taxes on to the poor in cost of goods sold, which the poor are too stupid to understand
ping
At a certain point, if prices continue to fall, they will simply walk away and leave the real estate to decay back into the ground.
At which point, the county picks it up for taxes due, and turns these series of estates into a county or state park. Thus they end up with a broad greenbelt, and the agrarian life of simplicity they have always held up as the ideal.
Or a wilderness, begging for recolonization.
“...experts on public finance and migration say they have yet to document a substantial “rich drain” in states that have raised income taxes in recent years.”
They obviously haven’t bothered to interview the 300,000 native born Americans who have left California every year, for the last few years.
Most of them make $60K and up a year, so yeah, according to Obama’s “experts”, they’re all rich.
About 30 years ago I worked for a condo development in Naples, FL. I can’t tell you how many NY’ers moved to FL and
bought condos with the money they saved on income tax.
About 30 years ago I worked for a condo development in Naples, FL. I can’t tell you how many NY’ers moved to FL and
bought condos with the money they saved on income tax.
Interesting point:
“You can’t tax too much those that can move.”
But you can tax too much those who can’t move.
Think about it.
Confiscatory taxation is fair for the democratic wealthy. I don’t see a problem with that as long as they are registered democrats, we can unburden them of the guilt they feel having accumulated all that money via capitalism.
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