Millionaires Won't Leave

Every time someone proposes taxing the wealthy, you hear the same warning: they'll leave.

Massachusetts tested it. In 2022, voters passed a four percent surtax on income over a million dollars. The owner of the Patriots funded the opposition and predicted an exodus.

Three years later, the state's millionaire population is up thirty-nine percent. Its billionaire count went from seven to nine. The surtax raised two point two billion dollars in its first full year, against a projection of one billion. And Massachusetts gained population the year it took effect, after losing population the year before.

That fits the research. Cornell sociologist Cristóbal Young studied thirteen years of tax returns covering every million-dollar filer in America. Millionaires move between states at two point four percent a year. People earning ten thousand dollars move at four point five.

The wealthy are among the least mobile people in the country. Their businesses are there. Their families are there. Their networks are there.

"They'll leave" isn't a prediction. It's a negotiating position.

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The Massachusetts Fair Share Amendment. Approved by voters in November 2022, the amendment imposed a 4% surtax on annual taxable income above $1 million, on top of the state's 5% flat income tax. It took effect January 1, 2023. Revenue is constitutionally earmarked for education and transportation.

The opposition campaign was led by Patriots owner Robert Kraft, New Balance's Jim Davis, and Boston investment firm CrossHarbor Capital Partners, and argued the measure would trigger tax flight and fail to address the state's fiscal needs.

Results through the three-year mark (November 2025):

• Revenue: $2.2 billion in the first full year, against a projection of roughly $1 billion.
• Millionaire population up 38.6% in the two years following passage (Institute for Policy Studies, 2025).
• Massachusetts billionaires on the Forbes 400 rose from 7 to 9 between 2022 and 2025.
• State population grew in 2023, the first year the surtax was in effect, after declining in 2022.

(Rhode Island Current / EPI policy brief; Baltimore Sun citing IPS; People's Policy Project, three-year assessment)

The migration research. Cristóbal Young — now Professor of Economic Sociology at Cornell, previously at Stanford, where this work was conducted — analyzed administrative IRS data covering every million-dollar income filer in the United States over 13 years: roughly 45 million tax returns from 3.7 million individuals, 1999 through 2011. The findings:

• Roughly 500,000 people file million-dollar returns in a given year; about 12,000 change states annually — a 2.4% migration rate.
• The general population moves at 2.9%.
• Filers earning around $10,000 a year move at 4.5% — nearly double the millionaire rate.

Young: "The most striking finding in our study is how little elites seem willing to move to exploit tax advantages across state lines. Millionaire tax flight is occurring, but only at the margins of significance."

His explanation is the "embedded elites" thesis: wealth accumulation is rooted in place and in insider advantage, and during peak earning years the wealthy are tied down by business ownership, professional networks, family, and community. The young and the low-income are far more mobile — partly because those with less have less holding them anywhere, and partly because the affluent can absorb a tax increase out of savings rather than restructuring their lives around it.

Published as The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight (Stanford University Press, 2018). Follow-up work with Ithai Lurie, "Taxing the Rich: How Incentives and Embeddedness Shape Millionaire Tax Flight," appeared in the American Journal of Sociology in 2025. (ASA summary; Young's research page; EurekAlert)

Washington State. Washington's capital gains tax took effect in 2022 at 7%, with an increase to 9.9% announced for 2025. Between 2022 and 2024, the state's millionaire population grew from 463,000 to more than 681,000 (IPS). Not used in the current script, but available as a second example.

Cut from an earlier draft: "Only three-tenths of one percent moved to a lower-tax state." This figure could not be verified in any published summary of Young's work and was removed during fact-checking. If it exists it is likely in the book itself; do not restore it without a page citation.

On scope — what this evidence does and does not cover. All of the above concerns income taxes on millionaires. It is strong evidence about surtaxes structured like the Massachusetts one — an ongoing levy on annual income above a threshold, which a taxpayer can only escape by permanently relocating.

It is weaker evidence about wealth taxes on billionaires, which differ on three axes: the base is accumulated net worth rather than annual income, the population is far smaller and differently situated, and a one-time assessment can potentially be avoided by a single well-timed move rather than a permanent relocation. California's Proposition 40 — a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of the state's roughly 200 billionaires, on the November 3, 2026 ballot — is the live example, and the Tax Foundation argues its residency provisions are "exceptionally vulnerable," such that billionaires departing during 2026 "have good reason to believe they can escape some or all of the tax."

An earlier draft of this script opened on Proposition 40. That framing was cut because it invites listeners to transfer the Massachusetts evidence to a materially different instrument. If a news hook is ever wanted, the better one is a proposed income surtax — New York City's proposed 2% surtax on incomes above $1 million is structurally analogous to Massachusetts, and Young has been cited throughout that debate — but verify the proposal's current status before airing. (Tax Foundation on Prop 40; Ballotpedia)

The counterargument. Critics note that Massachusetts' strong results coincided with a broad national run-up in asset values, which inflates millionaire counts everywhere and is not attributable to state tax policy. They also point out that migration data captures those who move but not those who never arrive — a business that chooses to incorporate elsewhere does not appear in exodus statistics. And a handful of high-profile departures (Ken Fisher's move from California, for instance) generate coverage disproportionate to their aggregate significance, which is itself part of why the perception persists. Young's response is that the border-discontinuity analysis — comparing millionaire density on either side of state lines with sharply different top rates — controls for national trends, and finds the same limited effect.

Related PM scripts: Who Actually Pays, Two Tax Codes, The 50-Year Experiment, The "Death Tax." Related Civic Minute segments: The Burden by the Numbers, The One Percent Is the Wrong Number.