The study also looked at regions of the country where it is easy for taxpayers to commute daily across state lines from low-tax states to high-tax states. Residents of Portland, Ore., for example, must pay a top state tax rate of 9.9 percent, while across the river in Vancouver, Wash., there’s no income tax at all. You would expect people of means to live on the low-tax side. Yet in these easily commutable border areas, “the difference in millionaire population at the state border is not significant,” the study concludes.
As for the jet-setting millionaire who has breakfast in Miami, spends the day in Manhattan, and wakes the next morning in his Idaho compound, changing where you’re taxed isn’t as simple as putting a different address on your 1040 form. States such as New York often demand proof from wealthy residents that they really have uprooted their lives and are spending more than half the year out of state.
One curious finding was how much the wealthy seem to like Florida. The Sunshine State is one of seven with no income tax, yet it accounts for almost all the tax-influenced migration the authors detected. Meanwhile, Texas, Tennessee, and New Hampshire didn’t appear to be drawing millionaires away from higher-tax states. In fact, when Florida is excluded from the analysis, there is “virtually no tax migration” by millionaires.
The authors can only guess why the rich prefer Florida. “It is the only state with coastal access to the Caribbean Sea,” they note, but “it is difficult to know whether the Florida effect is driven by tax avoidance, unique geography, or some especially appealing combination of the two.”
Look, lounging under a palm tree can be even more relaxing when it comes with a tax break. You don't have to be a sociologist to know that.