Tax-Avoidance Migrants

We have written before about the phenomenon of tax payers migrating to low-tax states. Now Instapundit Glenn Reynolds writes about this migration in his USA Today column.

IRS data show that taxpayers are migrating from high-tax states like New York, Illinois, and California to low-tax states like Texas and Florida. And it’s not just sports stars or star scientists, doing that, but fairly ordinary people — though, of course, people who earn enough money to pay taxes. If you’re living on welfare benefits and don't plan to change that, you won’t move to a low-tax state to escape taxes; if you move anywhere, it’ll probably be to a state that offers better benefits than the one you live in now.

High-tax, high-benefit states will eventually go bankrupt because they won’t retain enough taxpayers to support their welfare spending. And, in fact, that’s the direction that California, New York, and especially Illinois seem to be heading, even as places like Texas and Florida flourish.

Reynolds worries that blue-state taxpayers who move to red states will take their voting proclivities with them, thereby polluting the politics of the red states. I, however, believe it has already been shown that most migrants adopt the zeitgeist of their new state. Migrants to the Sun Belt vote more conservatively than they did before the move.