Outside the Beltway: New Yorkers’ Tax Blues Are Driving Them Out
Mike Brownfield /
While Frank Sinatra wanted to wake up in a city that doesn’t sleep, today’s New Yorkers are looking to live in states where taxes aren’t so steep.
New York, whose state and local taxes are among the highest in the nation, is bleeding residents due in large part to the state’s extraordinarily high tax rate. According to a new study by The Empire Center for New York State Policy:
From 2000 to 2008, in both absolute and relative terms, New York experienced the nation’s largest loss of residents to other states—a net domestic migration outflow of over 1.5 million, or 8 percent of its population at the start of the decade.
Of those who left, 1.1 million were former residents of New York City. That means that the Big Apple lost one out of every seven city taxpayers.
And it’s not New York City’s giant sewer rats that are driving people away.