Varner Presents Millionaire Migration And Taxation Of The Elite Today At Georgetown

Charles Varner (Stanford) presents Millionaire Migration and Taxation of the Elite: Evidence from Administrative Data (with Ithai Lurie (Office of Tax Analysis, U.S. Treasury Department), Richard Prisinzano (Pennsylvania) & Cristobal Young (Stanford)) at Georgetown today as part of its Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop Series hosted by Lilian Faulhaber and Itai Grinberg:

A growing number of U.S. states have adopted “millionaire taxes” on top income-earners. This increases the progressivity of state tax systems, but it raises concerns about tax flight: elites migrating from high-tax to low-tax states, draining state revenues, and undermining redistributive social policies. Are top income-earners “transitory millionaires” searching for lower-tax places to live? Or are they “embedded elites” who are reluctant to migrate away from places where they have been highly successful? This question is central to understanding the social consequences of progressive taxation. We draw on administrative tax returns for all million-dollar income-earners in the United States over 13 years, tracking the states from which millionaires file their taxes. Our dataset contains 45 million tax records and provides census-scale panel data on top income-earners. We advance two core analyses: (1) state-tostate migration of millionaires over the long-term, and (2) a sharply-focused discontinuity analysis of millionaire population along state borders. We find that millionaire tax flight is occurring, but only at the margins of statistical and socioeconomic significance.

• TaxProf Blog, Study Shatters Myth That Millionaires Migrate To Low Tax States
• Bloomberg, Higher Taxes Don’t Scare Millionaires Into Fleeing Their Homes After All
• BoingBoing, Rich People Don't Move When Their Taxes Go Up
• CBS News, Do Higher Taxes Really Drive Millionaires to Flee?
• Money, The Rich Aren’t Fleeing Higher Taxes After All
• Science Daily, Study Dispels Myth About Millionaire Migration in the US
• Tax Justice Blog, Tax Migration Myth Refuses To Die
• TaxVox, Do High State Taxes Drive Away Millionaires? Not Really