High taxes and heavy regulations. People and companies are voting with their feet.

Sure, which is why these cities are turning into ghost towns…

> the loss of high-income taxpayers

California state revenue is ~66% income tax.

Don't have resources for what percentage of that comes from the top 1%, but it's likely more skewed than at the Federal level, which is ~45% of income tax.

It's almost as if Prop 13 wasn't a genius idea, and it's starting to come back to bite the state.

SALT change in 2017 limited federal deduction on state income taxes, which seemed like a direct and successful attempt to create this outcome.

My guess is that many people are either not happy or can see the benefits in a less-taxed jurisdiction but moving is not an easy thing. The pandemic might have helped them achieve this move (as many people already were displaced and lots of employees went remote).

> The article doesn't make that entirely clear.

Yeah, articles like this frustrate me because there isn't much of an attempt to paint the whole picture. It's a catchy headline and a cursory examination to back it up. For example:

> The net number of taxpayers moving out of New York based on the preliminary 2021 tax-year data at the time was over 10,000 higher than the annual net average of 28,700 personal income taxpayers between 2015 and 2019

There's a turnover of people moving in and out of every state, every year. That the figure was around 1/3 higher in 2021 than in previous years certainly feels notable.

> The migration trend followed a net total of 112,400 taxpayers moving out in 2020, nearly four times as many as in 2019, according to the comptroller’s study.

Now what might have occurred in 2020 to cause such large numbers of moves? It amazes me the article doesn't say the word "COVID" once. In that context the 2021 numbers look like a move back towards the norm of previous years. But there's no attempt to examine that.

The original article came from Bloomberg. It nicely charts out inflows and outflows from each state.

Generally, it's because of lower cost of living. But, there are other things mentioned such as bringing expertise to areas requiring more diverse financial needs, as well as quality of life/relaxed life style. But, almost all studies of this migration point to cost of living.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-asset-management-rel...