Preston Brashers
Businessman and investor Kevin O’Leary recently described states such as New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and California as “uninvestable” with “insane” policies and taxes that are too high.REF O’Leary is not alone in his assessment. These states consistently rank at or near the bottom of the annual Chief Executive survey of the best and worst states for business.REF State and local income tax rates in California, New York, and New Jersey are two to three times higher than in most other states.REF In addition, these states have high regulatory burdens, high production costs, and a high risk of litigation.REF
Business migration out of these states is a common occurrence. California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts are all in the top five of U.S. states losing population to interstate migration.REF Hundreds of companies have moved headquarters and jobs out of California alone.REF In August 2024, Chevron announced it would move its company headquarters out of San Ramon, California, and into Houston, Texas.REF Many other companies have recently moved headquarters from California to Texas, including CBRE Group, Charles Schwab, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle, and Pabst Brewing.REF Since 2020, Elon Musk has moved or announced plans to move five of his companies’ headquarters or core functions out of California and into Texas: Tesla, SpaceX, X, Neuralink, and the Boring Company.REF
It is not just corporations and the very wealthy who are fleeing from high-tax states. High-tax states lose almost 1 million people per year to lower-tax states, only a small fraction of whom are company CEOs or multimillionaires.REF Californians and New Yorkers from all walks of life have chosen to leave.
This report examines the magnitude of the migration out of high-tax states, the most common specific state-to-state migration flows, the relationship between different types of taxes and out-of-state migration, other factors in migration, » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/taxes/report/if-you-tax-them-they-will-run-millions-americans-flee-california-and-new-york