Wealthy Americans are continuing to flee high-tax states â and is paying the price.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in Manhattan. The borough led the nation in new tax filers between 2022 and 2023, but it still lost roughly $922 million in adjusted gross income as high-income taxpayers departed and were replaced by lower-earning newcomers.
With the 2026 midterm elections approaching, the migration of high-income taxpayers is becoming more than a demographic trend â it’s a political and fiscal test for governors and state lawmakers. Wealthy households contribute a disproportionate share of income tax revenue in states with progressive tax systems, making the size and composition of a state’s tax base critical to funding schools, infrastructure and other public services.
As states compete to attract and retain affluent residents, the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) offers one of the clearest measures of which tax policies are winning, and which states are .
Other parts of New York City and its surrounding suburbs also experienced significant outflows.
According to the IRS data, Queens County lost 17,109 tax filers to interstate migration between 2022 and 2023, the second-largest net loss in the nation, while the Bronx lost 16,319. Suffolk County and Nassau County also ranked among the 10 counties with the biggest outflows.
In fact, all 10 counties with the largest net losses in tax filers were located in either New York or California, underscoring the continued exodus from some of the nations highest-taxed and most expensive Democrat-run states.
Many of the taxpayers leaving New York have relocated to lower-tax states such as Florida and , which have been among the biggest beneficiaries of interstate migration in recent years and are conversely run by Republicans.
“It’s very, very clear that people ultimately vote with their feet, and when they feel like they’re getting taxed too much, they go somewhere else where they will be taxed less,” E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital.
“New York has been learning that lesson over and over again, but apparently hasn’t learned it well enough yet because they have been hemorrhaging their most valuable resource â people,” he added.
The migration carries significant implications for state finances.
High-income earners account for a disproportionate share of state income tax collections, meaning the loss of relatively few wealthy households can have an outsized effect on government revenues.
Manhattan’s experience underscores why economists increasingly focus on rather than population migration alone. Although the most densely populated borough attracted more tax filers than any county in the nation, the loss of higher-income households produced one of the country’s largest declines in adjusted gross income.
For states that rely heavily on top earners for tax revenue, retaining wealthy residents can matter more than adding larger numbers of middle-income taxpayers.
Antoni said the show taxpayers are consistently choosing lower-tax states over higher-tax alternatives.
“They’re not going to Massachusetts or Illinois or California,” he said. “They’re going to Texas. They’re going to Tennessee. They’re going to Florida â places with low or no income taxes and low overall levels of taxation.”
