We retired Tax Justice Blog in April 2017. For new content on issues related to tax justice, go to www.justtaxesblog.org
In the past year, we’ve documented ad nauseum the lengths that anti-tax advocates will go to in order to convince lawmakers that the so-called “millionaire’s tax” is prompting wealthy taxpayers to move to other states. In Maryland, New Jersey and Oregon, these groups have selectively presented data in order to “show” that resident millionaires are packing up their Lear Jets and moving to Florida. And in each case, we’ve shown that when the data are presented honestly and fully, there’s simply no evidence that millionaires are voting with their feet.
But the latest such effort, by the Partnership for New York City, breaks new ground by simply making data up. For example, the report says that “Since the imposition of New York’s surcharge in 2009, there has been a 9.4 percent decrease in the state’s taxpayers who earn $1 million or more, decreasing from 381,786 in 2007 to 345,892 in 2009.” Take a minute and read that quote again. What the Partnership is implying is that millionaires had the magical ability to see into the future and start moving out of New York in 2007 and 2008 as a result of a tax increase that hadn’t even happened yet.
Next, it’s worth taking a closer look at that 381,786 figure, the supposed amount of millionaires in New York in 2007. Interestingly enough there is state-by-state data available from the IRS which shows that there were actually only 375,265 returns with federal adjusted gross income over $200,000 in 2007. Of course, not all 375,265 returns were all millionaires. So the 381,786 figure sited by the Partnership is troubling to say the least.
What is even more troubling is that there isn’t actual data available (from New York or the federal government) for 2009 showing the number of tax returns by income group. Which leaves us with a very troubling question — where does the Partnerships earlier figure of 345,892 millionaires in 2009 actually come from?
The answer: they’re using a forecast of the number of households in each state with wealth, not income, of $1 million or more. See the data. Released last September by a marketing firm, these estimates tell us a few interesting things. One is that between 2007 and 2009, the nation as a whole lost 13.9 percent of its net-worth “millionaires” between 2007 and 2009, which makes the 9.4 percent loss for New York seem not that impressive. Another is that 43 of the 50 states lost proportionally more of their net-worth “millionaires” over this period than did New York. So, leaving aside the minor detail that income taxes are based on income rather than wealth, which makes these marketing data utterly irrelevant to the point the Partnership is trying to make, any objective look at this data would suggest that New York is doing better than most other states.
For more on the many flaws of the Partnership’s paper, read this brief from the Fiscal Policy Institute. Suffice to say, the theory that New York millionaires are moving because of a targeted tax increase is based on deeply flawed (and perhaps even made up) data.