IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ntj/journl/v64y2011i2p255-83.html

Millionaire Migration and State Taxation of Top Incomes: Evidence From a Natural Experiment*

* This paper has been replicated

Author

Listed:
  • Young, Cristobal
  • Varner, Charles

Abstract

This paper examines the migration response to a millionaire tax in New Jersey, which raised its income tax rate on top earners by 2.6 percentage points to 8.97 percent, one of the highest tax rates in the country. Drawing on unique state tax micro-data, we estimate the migration response of millionaires to the rate increase, using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy. The results indicate little responsiveness, with semi-elasticities generally below 0.1. Tax-induced migration is estimated to be higher among people of retirement age, people living on investment income rather than wages, and people who work (and pay tax) entirely in-state. The tax is estimated to raise $1 billion per year and modestly reduce income inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Young, Cristobal & Varner, Charles, 2011. "Millionaire Migration and State Taxation of Top Incomes: Evidence From a Natural Experiment," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 64(2), pages 255-283, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ntj:journl:v:64:y:2011:i:2:p:255-83
    DOI: 10.17310/ntj.2011.2.02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.17310/ntj.2011.2.02
    Download Restriction: Access is restricted to subscribers and members of the National Tax Association.
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.17310/ntj.2011.2.02
    Download Restriction: Access is restricted to subscribers and members of the National Tax Association.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17310/ntj.2011.2.02?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George R. Zodrow, 2007. "The Property Tax Incidence Debate and the Mix of State and Local Finance of Local Public Expenditures," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 53(4), pages 495-521, December.
    2. Emmanuel Saez & Joel Slemrod & Seth H. Giertz, 2012. "The Elasticity of Taxable Income with Respect to Marginal Tax Rates: A Critical Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 3-50, March.
    3. David E. Wildasin, 1993. "State income taxation with mobile labor," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(1), pages 51-75.
    4. Jon Bakija & Joel Slemrod, 2004. "Do the Rich Flee from High State Taxes? Evidence from Federal Estate Tax Returns," Department of Economics Working Papers 2004-12, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    5. James M. Poterba, 1993. "Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 7," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number pote93-1, August.
    6. Thomas Liebig & Patrick A. Puhani & Alfonso Sousa‐Poza, 2007. "Taxation And Internal Migration—Evidence From The Swiss Census Using Community‐Level Variation In Income Tax Rates," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(4), pages 807-836, October.
    7. John Bound & David A. Jaeger & Regina Baker, 1993. "The Cure Can Be Worse than the Disease: A Cautionary Tale Regarding Instrumental Variables," NBER Technical Working Papers 0137, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Daniel Feenberg & Elisabeth Coutts, 1993. "An introduction to the TAXSIM model," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(1), pages 189-194.
    9. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2007. "How Progressive is the U.S. Federal Tax System? A Historical and International Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(1), pages 3-24, Winter.
    10. Mirrlees, J. A., 1982. "Migration and optimal income taxes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 319-341, August.
    11. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2003. "Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 1-41.
    12. Austan Goolsbee, 2000. "What Happens When You Tax the Rich? Evidence from Executive Compensation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(2), pages 352-378, April.
    13. Alberto Abadie & Alexis Diamond & Jens Hainmueller, 2007. "Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California's Tobacco Control Program," NBER Working Papers 12831, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Daniel R. Feenberg & James M. Poterba, 1993. "Income Inequality and the Incomes of Very High-Income Taxpayers: Evidence from Tax Returns," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 7, pages 145-177, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Leigh, Andrew, 2008. "Do Redistributive State Taxes Reduce Inequality?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 61(1), pages 81-104, March.
    16. James M. Poterba (ed.), 1993. "Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 7," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262660814, December.
    17. Kathleen Day & Stanley Winer, 2006. "Policy-induced internal migration: An empirical investigation of the Canadian case," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 13(5), pages 535-564, September.
    18. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Camille Landais & Emmanuel Saez, 2013. "Taxation and International Migration of Superstars: Evidence from the European Football Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(5), pages 1892-1924, August.
    19. Gruber, Jon & Saez, Emmanuel, 2002. "The elasticity of taxable income: evidence and implications," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 1-32, April.
    20. Coomes, Paul A. & Hoyt, William H., 2008. "Income taxes and the destination of movers to multistate MSAs," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 920-937, May.
    21. Auten, Gerald & Gee, Geoffrey, 2009. "Income Mobility in the United States: New Evidence From Income Tax Data," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 62(2), pages 301-328, June.
    22. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    23. Feldstein, Martin, 1995. "The Effect of Marginal Tax Rates on Taxable Income: A Panel Study of the 1986 Tax Reform Act," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(3), pages 551-572, June.
    24. Liliana Winkelmann & Rainer Winkelmann, 1998. "Why Are the Unemployed So Unhappy?Evidence from Panel Data," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 65(257), pages 1-15, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bargain, Olivier B. & Dolls, Mathias & Immervoll, Herwig & Neumann, Dirk & Peichl, Andreas & Pestel, Nico & Siegloch, Sebastian, 2011. "Tax Policy and Income Inequality in the U.S., 1978-2009: A Decomposition Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 5910, IZA Network @ LISER.
    2. Emmanuel Saez & Joel Slemrod & Seth H. Giertz, 2012. "The Elasticity of Taxable Income with Respect to Marginal Tax Rates: A Critical Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 3-50, March.
    3. Giertz, Seth H. & Tosun, Mehmet S., 2012. "Migration Elasticities, Fiscal Federalism, and the Ability of States to Redistribute Income," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 65(4), pages 1069-1092, December.
    4. Mario Alloza, 2021. "The impact of taxes on income mobility," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 28(4), pages 794-854, August.
    5. Emmanuel Saez, 2017. "Taxing the Rich More: Preliminary Evidence from the 2013 Tax Increase," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(1), pages 71-120.
    6. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2012. "Optimal Labor Income Taxation," NBER Working Papers 18521, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Emmanuel Saez, 2004. "Reported Incomes and Marginal Tax Rates, 1960–2000: Evidence and Policy Implications," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 18, pages 117-174, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Poterba, James M., 2007. "Income inequality and income taxation," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 623-633.
    9. Martinez, Isabel Z., 2016. "Beggar-Thy-Neighbour Tax Cuts: Mobility after a Local Income and Wealth Tax Reform in Switzerland," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145643, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    10. Jon Bakija & Adam Cole & Bradley Heim, 2008. "Jobs and Income Growth of Top Earners and the Causes of Changing Income Inequality: Evidence from U.S. Tax Return Data," Department of Economics Working Papers 2010-22, Department of Economics, Williams College, revised Jan 2012.
    11. Joshua Rauh & Ryan Shyu, 2024. "Behavioral Responses to State Income Taxation of High Earners: Evidence from California," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 34-86, February.
    12. Giertz, Seth H. & Ramezani, Rasoul, 2018. "Taxes, Wage Capitalization and the Ability of States to Redistribute Income," GLO Discussion Paper Series 291, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    13. Tino Sanandaji, 2014. "The international mobility of billionaires," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 329-338, February.
    14. Enrico Rubolino & Daniel Waldenström, 2019. "Trends and gradients in top tax elasticities: cross-country evidence, 1900–2014," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 26(3), pages 457-485, June.
    15. Florian Scheuer & Iván Werning, 2017. "The Taxation of Superstars," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(1), pages 211-270.
    16. Jeffrey Thompson, 2012. "Raising Revenue from High-Income Households: Should States Continue to Place the Lowest Tax Rates on Those with the Highest Incomes?," Published Studies revenue_peri_march5, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    17. Emmanuel Saez & Michael R. Veall, 2003. "The Evolution of High Incomes in Canada, 1920-2000," NBER Working Papers 9607, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Lang (Kate) Yang & Bradley T. Heim, 2017. "Responsiveness of Income to Local Income Taxes: Evidence from Indiana," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 70(2), pages 367-392, June.
    19. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 2014. "The Incentive Effects of Marginal Tax Rates: Evidence from the Interwar Era," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 242-281, August.
    20. Julio López Laborda & Fernando Rodrigo Sauco, 2017. "Movilidad de los contribuyentes de rentas altas en respuesta a las diferencias regionales en los impuestos personales," Studies on the Spanish Economy eee2017-28, FEDEA.

    Replication

    This item has been replicated by:
  • Roger S. Cohen & Andrew E. Lai & Charles Steindel, 2015. "A Replication of “Millionaire Migration and State Taxation of Top Incomes," Public Finance Review, , vol. 43(2), pages 206-225, March.

    • More about this item

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Millionaire Migration and State Taxation of Top Incomes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment (NTJ 2011) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ntj:journl:v:64:y:2011:i:2:p:255-83. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: The University of Chicago Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ntanet.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.