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Brody Oaks's avatar

Truly astonishing. Democrats have for as long as I can remember argued, correctly in my opinion, that people (especially the rich) should pay more in taxes. So here we are, paying more taxes (myself included!) and now its the Democratic party arguing the rich are taxed too much. When I say that I'm not quite sure what the Democrats stand for any longer, this SALT deduction brew-ha-ha is one of the big reasons why.

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HBI's avatar

Are we willfully ignoring the reality that this tax policy is moving people around the country from high tax states to lower ones? It's a significant impact to blue states to lose high earners and erode their tax base. If you're making under $50k a year, you're probably a net negative revenue to the state you live in. Not so if that number is $150k. At that number you can easily exceed the SALT limits, and be therefore encouraged to move away.

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D.A. Douglas's avatar

Maybe the solution would be for high tax states to become low tax ones?

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Brody Oaks's avatar

I'd like to see the evidence showing: A) All blue states are losing population and B) said population loss is caused by said blue state's tax policy. As I noted above, this same line gets reported in the press from time to time, but I'd like to see the long-term evidence that this is true.

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Indecisive decider's avatar

People migrating out of CA are being replaced with people earning less than those that have left, eroding the tax base. CA historically attracted $120k + engineers, but with COVID, the realization is that engineering work can be done from a hot tub in Des Moines and people don't have to be in high tax/cost of living areas like coastal CA.

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HBI's avatar

By the time you get something conclusive, the movement already happened.

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Brody Oaks's avatar

Ah, data! Now you're speaking my language! Interesting! Did you notice the high-earner inbound / outbound numbers? $100k + earners made up 76% of inbound vs. 69% of outbound! Very interesting! The age numbers show us that folks move into CA skew younger, and the reasons for inbound favor "job" while the outbound reasons tends to "retirement". So you have a younger, wealthier demographic moving to CA to look for work or start a new job, and older people moving out because they want to retire somewhere else. Serious question, what category there do we think would capture tax policy impacts? Retirement, probably, right? Older folks on a relatively limited income might view taxes as a primary reason to move. So if we had to make judgements on this data alone, would it be fair to say different demographics might have different reasons to stay or go?

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RAH's avatar

I don't think you can draw any conclusions from this other than blue states are at the top of the leaving list. The data doesn't look at net worth and this is important because retirement savings (via taxes on mandatory distributions of pre-tax savings) represent a significant consideration in future tax receipts. If you don't believe me look at the tentative discussions going on in NY, NJ and CA regards to levying state taxes on high net worth individuals even after they have left the state.

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HBI's avatar

Actually...my company gives stock distributions out annually that vest over 5 years. All the distributions that happened while I was in MD, even though they didn't vest, get taxed by MD until that 5 year sunset. So, in a way, they are already doing this. I'm going to be filling out MD tax returns until 2023 on a move that happened in mid-2018.

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therealjosh's avatar

would be interested to see the 'median' which skews towards lower income versus the 'average' which skews towards higher incomer, especially the very high income ($1M+). Either way we will see in a year or two what the effect on tax revenue is for raising taxes in California and New York.

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Jonathan's avatar

I'm a fairly well off Republican in a deeply red state. I was supportive of the tax reform despite the fact it adversely affected my own finances, because I below it was good for the country overall. If it wasn't for all the idpol horseshit I might join ranks with the Dems. I feel so lost.

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