Superrich stay put in high-tax states like California
An analysis by this newspaper of IRS tax-return data shows that states that charge high income taxes -- from California to New York to New Jersey -- are home to the highest number of rich people per capita. And two-thirds of the states that don't charge any income taxes actually have fewer numbers of millionaire residents per capita, the analysis shows.
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Over the past 15 years, California has maintained the same share of the nation's ultrarich, even after voters passed the state's first "millionaires' tax" in 2004. That echoes the experience documented in studies of other states that have raised taxes on the wealthy.
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There just isn't any persuasive evidence out there to make you think that there would be a significant
number of Californians moving because of this tax change," said Carl Davis, senior policy analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan research group based in Washington D.C.
The issue of where our millionaires live, always a fun one to gossip about, is also increasingly critical to the state's financial health as California tries to stave off cuts to classrooms and the poor. The wealthiest 1 percent of Californians -- those Bentley-driving, mansion-living people who make about 50 times as much as us average folk -- provide more than $20 billion in income taxes each year. That's about one-fourth of the state's general-fund budget -- and could soon grow.
http://www.mercurynews.com/california-budget/ci_21668375/superrich-stay-put-high-tax-states-like-california
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